


Slam

by HyacinthusAmongUs



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Murder Mystery, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Nico, Serial Killers, Slam Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-06 23:26:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 22,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1876509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HyacinthusAmongUs/pseuds/HyacinthusAmongUs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Not a medium,” Nico countered, taking a sip. “Medium’s see the dead.”</p><p>“That’s what you’re here for,” Reyna greeted, sitting down on Jason’s other side. “We want details on Ms. Beauregard.”</p><p>“You want details on how she was killed,” Nico replied. “She was alive before she died.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Trust me, everyone says that this guy knows something,” Jason told his partner, tracing the X on the back of his plastic cup. “Everyone I’ve talked to says that he knows something.”

Reyna scoffed, crossing her arms. “Then why are we here? Why not go to his apartment?”

“Because,” the male officer sighed, “whenever he goes to a Slam, he tends to drop off the grid for a few days. We have to get to him before that.”

His partner sighed heavily, turning her attention to the stage. “So he’s a druggie, alcoholic poet. What exactly are we getting from him?”

Jason tapped his glass idly. “Well, for one, he knows the scene, probably knows the victim too,” he reasoned. “And aside from that, he’s psychic.”

“You dragged me all the way out to Bronx for some crystal ball-“

Jason cut her off. “He’s consoled before with Bronx five-oh, the captain swears up and down that this guy is legit. It can’t hurt to consider this, Rey.”

“Fine,” Reyna spat, holding her hands up in surrender. “But when this doesn’t work out, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Noted,” Jason agreed, just as the lights went down. They both looked at the stage, particularly the ink-stained boy stepping out. He was wearing a black-leather jacket that did nothing to cover the tattoo on the back of his left hand, his white v-neck dipped low enough to expose the black ink spilling across his collarbones. Black skinny-jeans clung to his thin legs, tucked into checkered vans in an almost casual manner. His nails were painted as dark as his hair and his lined eyes. Everything about the kid screamed death and rebellion.

Jason knew he was older than the kid by at least five years, hell, he hardly looked like he could legally order a drink under all that make up and leather and black visage. And yet, under all that, Jason saw a weight to Nico’s shoulders that didn’t exist in most twenty year olds. 

“This poem is new,” Nico di Angelo introduced. “It’s called ‘Ode to the Rave Boy’.”

After a slight pause for applause, Nico, smiling, spoke his poem.

“ _Someone must have pressed their hands against your back so hard,  
 _To curve your spine like Cupid’s Bow when you stand so still,  
 _But damn if that curve doesn’t defy every mathematician,  
 _Because beautiful Rave Boy, you are the world’s sexiest enigma,  
 _You make me want to solve you.  
 _Alabaster fingers tracing neon-painted skin,  
 _You make glow-sticks look like the brightest of stars,  
 _The moon feels so weak when you look with those shining eyes,  
 _The sun never complimented you like black-lights do.  
 _Everything natural in this world hates how you juxtapose it,  
 _Flowers lose the will to fight knowing you exist.  
 _Who crafted the galaxies of your eyes out of stars and lust?  
 _How’d you learn to move your hips own their own axis?  
 _I want to take you back to my room and read you dirty poetry,  
 _Read you_ my _dirty poetry,  
 _Can you read me all the classics in that voice,  
 _And if your voice was a person,  
 _I’d let you two do all kinds of poetry to me.  
 _Rave Boy, beautiful Rave Boy,  
 _I will never know your name like I know your bird-cage hips in my hands,  
 _I will never know your name like I know your teeth on my neck,  
 _I will never know your name like I know your breath in my ear.  
 _Seven digits could never sum you up, Rave Boy,  
 _I can only describe you in day-glow paint and neon lights,  
 _In tight jeans and a nice leather collar,  
 _Because everything you are, Rave Boy,  
 _Is last night’s love, and today’s lovely bruises.”___________________________

Jason clapped with the rest of the crowd, watching Nico leave the stage and accept a drink from a boy with an eye-patch. They laughed together, speaking in the gentle, easy way that friend’s speak together, sharing casual touches as the next few poems went on.

Finally, open mic ended, and Jason’s window of opportunity was thrown open. The partners rose together, crossing the room and coming up behind the tattooed poet. Jason was about to reach out and tap their lead on the shoulder, when he turned around with a look sharp enough to cut glass.

“Officers,” he greeted casually, swirling his drink around in his hand. His eyes scanned over the casual clothes Jason and his partner were wearing, as if looking for a badge to confirm his identification. Jason flashed it from his jacket pocket, more of a formality judging by the poet’s nod to continue. “I’m guessing this is about… I think her name was Silena?” Reyna rose an eyebrow, but nodded. “Fair enough, I guess. Here’s the story: she was a good poet, we slept together once, over a year ago, I went to a slam she was at a few weeks ago, we talked, I went home with some guy named Mitchell, and that’s all I know,” it was a story that he’d obviously told before. It was said with a tired sigh, as if he were bored of it already. “Well, all you probably care about.”

“Good to know,” Jason nodded, catching Reyna writing Nico’s response down. “However, we were looking for the kind of information you specialize in.”

Nico raised an eyebrow, Jason quickly realized as a gesture in the poet’s resting expression. “You talked to Zhang?”

Jason nodded. “He said you could point us in the right direction, yes.”

“Why do you need me?”

The male detective sighed. “We’ve combed over the crime scene countless times, and we have nothing. A friend of mine said you specialize it getting information from dry scenes.”

The poet scoffed. “It’s not a science,” he explained. “If it comes, it comes. You have to take me to places of interest if you really want anything specific, the fresher the scene the better. And I don’t play well with grunts. Last time I pushed myself too far, I put my fist through a window, and I get crippling migraines after a few hours. I have no loyalties to you specifically, and I’m out the moment this gets too personal. You really want this?”

“I want to catch a murderer.”

“Not a murderer,” Nico corrected, receiving an eyebrow raise from the two officers. “The way he killed her? Way too specific to be a one-time thing.” He stood, taking a drink and squeezing his one-eyed friend’s shoulder as a goodbye. “No, officer. We’ve got a serial killer among us.” 

 

They met the next morning at a coffee shop, per Nico’s request (Jason didn’t bother asking how the boy had gotten his personal number, knowing he’d probably receive some kind of aloof psychic bullshit). By the time they arrived, the poet had already settled into a corner booth, drinking from a rather large cup of coffee. Even at half-past eleven in the morning, Nico look like he had just rolled out of bed, hair un-straightened and windswept where it fell across the back of his neck. He’d changed, this time donning a black sweater and bright red skinny jeans. His sleeves hung over his hands, but exposed most of his tattoo to the careful observer. He’d forgone the make-up and the leather, looking much softer than he had the night before.

“So what is it?” Jason asked, sitting down across from Nico while Reyna got their drinks. He gestured to the confused poet’s hand, watching his eyes light up with recognition and a little excitement.

“Yeah, I got this on my nineteenth birthday,” he explained, pulling his sleeve down to expose the entire work. On the center of his hand was a dark blue diamond stretched across his pale flesh and tendons. Surrounded by the diamond were dark brown beads that led a single chain up his wrist, then spilt off into two chains, like a rosary. They circled his wrist once, then traveled down his hand and reconnected after a loop around his middle finger. Nico traced the painted beads idly. “It’s the Hope diamond,” he said, tapping the center of his hand. “Supposedly, anyone who held this diamond would die a horrible death.”

“And the beads?”

Nico smirked. “Mom was Roman Catholic. Rosary beads were always this big thing to her, something about faith. And while I can’t say I believe in a man who lives in the clouds and made every living person but hates gay people, I do have faith that there are things in this world that can fuck you up. Things that carry dark, harsh energy, like the Hope Diamond.”

Jason nodded, eyes tracing over the tattoo. “That’s a part of you being a medium?”

“Not a medium,” Nico countered, taking a sip. “Medium’s see the dead.”

“That’s what you’re here for,” Reyna greeted, sitting down on Jason’s other side. “We want details on Ms. Beauregard.”

“You want details on how she was killed,” Nico replied. “She was alive before she died.”

“Astute observation.”

The poet rolled his eyes. “I’m a psychic. I don’t talk to ghosts or channel spirits. I work primarily in retrocognition and psychometry,”he explained, tapping on the table top. “Respectively, seeing events that occurred in the past, and getting information about people or things by channeling the energy surrounding it. It kind of bleeds into scrying, but that’s more like seeing into the future, and that’s way harder. By the by, I’m using these fancy Wikipedia terms so you can do your cop research, I can spell it if you need.”

He ended up writing it down, because they were each battling their own dyslexic demons, and Nico was the best when it came to writing. “The world needs spellcheck,” he muttered after handing back Reyna’s notepad. “But that’s how my powers work. I can see up to the moment she died, but not a moment after. No ghosts.”

The officers shared a look, but nodded their agreement.

“Anyway, that’s what I can do. It’s better if you take me to crime scenes. Don’t share any details, I’m not going to try and make my story match yours. I’ll try and give you details, but this isn’t an exact science. You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.”

The officers nodded in agreement, and the three talked for a few minutes, discussing the terms of their arrangement. “So,” Nico finally asked, standing up. “When do we start?”

“Are you free tomorrow?” Reyna asked, putting her notes away. 

“Sure, if you can come get me. No car,” he excused, checking his phone. “Nine good with you guys?” The detectives nodded. “Good, see you tomorrow.”

With that, Nico was gone. Reyna and Jason went over case notes for an hour, then left. On opposite sides of town, Nico and Jason sat down, the detective at his desk, the poet against his door, and thought about a dead girl.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, The Fourth snuck up on me and consumed my weekend, damned patriotism. But anyway, thank you for the support, let us commence with the chapter!

Jason showed up at nine the next morning. The moment he knocked on the door, he heard a loud crash from behind the door, and a second later, it flew open. The detective was looking just slightly below eye level, expecting Nico, but he was surprised to find out the person greeting him was much shorter.

“Hello?” he asked the little girl answering the door. She smiled up at Jason, twirling her long blonde braid between her fingers.

“Are you Nico’s friend?” she asked, looking over her shoulder. “Nico!”

The psychic came into the room behind her, pulling a jacket on. “Thanks for getting the door Caly,” he said, coming over a ruffling her hair affectionately. “Morning Grace, let me just get-“

A third person came from the back of the apartment, brushing her fiery red hair into a ponytail. “I got it Nico, you go on.” She shooed him away, placing her hand on the little girls shoulder. Although they both had green eyes, Jason couldn’t see the two girls being related: Caly had eyes like an ocean, a dark, sea green, while the red haired girl’s were jade, bright and shining. The little girl had a much narrower, sharper looking face, while Nico’s friend had a rounder, softer look to her. She looked more like Nico, but there was no way the ten year old looking girl could be Nico’s child, considering the poet himself was only twenty-four. 

“Alright, thanks Rach,” he told her with a kind smile. He bent down and kissed Caly on the forehead. “I’ll be back tonight. Love you.”

“Love you too, Neeks.”

The poet lead Jason out of the building, out to Jason’s car, before the detective asked about it.

“Is she-“

“My daughter?” Nico asked, sliding into the passenger seat. He responded in such a calm, casual manner, like he got that question a lot. “No, not biologically that is. I adopted her when I was twenty-two though, so I guess she kind of is, although she doesn’t call me dad. I’m more like a big bother to her than anything else.”

Jason nodded, starting the car and heading toward where Reyna was waiting. “How’d that happen?”

The poet’s face darkened, reaching up for something around his neck. “When she was six, she started having these… episodes. They took her to all kinds of doctors, put her on a handful of medications, but none of it worked. She eventually had one of these attacks with a pencil in her hand, and started writing things. She wrote something about a car accident, and the next day, a car crashed into their living room.”

“Wow?”

“Yeah,” Nico agreed, staring out the window. “They looked it up, and found out about this phenomenon called automatic writing, a psychic ability. I had a website where I talked about psychic abilities and the paranormal, so they called me. We started talking, and I met Caly. She’s got precognition, like my roommate Rachel, so we started talking, helping her get it under control, and it worked. The episodes were rarer, she stopped having them in public, and we made sure she had a pen close by at all times for whenever she did.

“And her parents, Percy and Annabeth, they were,” he closed his eyes, a sad smile creeping onto his face. “They were so amazing. They’d do anything for Calypso, and when I suggested psychic abilities, they accepted it. No fighting, no ‘my daughter is normal’, just ‘what can we do to help?’

“And I loved that about them. So we started talking, and Caly started spending the night, and they did too,” he winked at Jason, who nodded to show he understood the implication. 

“They sound nice.”

“They were,” Nico agreed, pulling the chain around his neck out from under his shirt. Hanging from the chain were two dog-tags and a ring, a simple gold band. “Their shore leave ran out, and they went back out on service. I took care of Caly. And then, I got the call.”

Jason, stopped at a red light, looked over to the psychic, who was running his fingers over the tags. “I’m sorry, that must have been hard.”

The poet nodded. “It was. Honestly, I don’t think I’ll ever be completely over them, because they were the kind of lovers you never want to think about losing, but I manage. And Caly is the spitting image of her mother, but with her dad’s eyes, and she moves like him and acts like her and she’s just like them sometimes.”

Jason pulled up to the bar, whipping into a recently vacated parking space. He and Nico exited the vehicle, sharing a look that Jason could only label as a friendly sort of sympathy. The moment ended, and they both wordlessly entered the bar where Silena Beauregard was last seen alive.

 

“She sat right here,” Nico said, plopping himself down on a well-worn bar stool. He closed his eyes, running his hand over the polished wood in front of him. “I’m seeing a person. Guy, mid-twenties, he ordered her a drink, they talked, she felt kind of sick so she left,” he stood up, and the detectives, who’d been standing a few feet away, took a step back. “She left out the front,” he started walking towards the door, eyes still closed, and Jason had to grab the back of his jacket to keep him from walking into a patron. He stayed close, directing the psychic out so he didn’t bump into anything, and they were back outside. The psychic stopped in front of a car, eyebrows scrunched together. “She was going to drive home, but something stopped her.”

He opened his eyes, looking around. “It stops there.”

“Any details on the guy?” Reyna asked, scrawling something down on her notepad. 

Nico closed his eyes again, a searching expression melding to his features. “It’s not clear, all I know is he’s young-ish, and he seemed kind of approachable to Silena, so he was probably reasonably attractive. Aside from that, I’m guessing he was in the crowd during the reading, so maybe he’s on security footage-“

“The bar’s cameras went down half an hour before Silena left.”

“Hmm,” Nico replied, opening his eyes. “She was found somewhere close by?”

“Other side of the city, actually.”

Nico frowned, turning on his heel. “There’s something near here.” He held out his arm, letting Jason take his sleeve, and started walking. Luckily, the sidewalk wasn’t as inhabited as it would be closer to downtown, so it was easier for the detective to guide Nico down the street and into an alleyway. The psychic looked around, his eyes still firmly shut, until he found a patch of wall that he found interesting. There was something smeared across it, pointing down in a crude arrow, then curving to point behind a dumpster. Nico crouched, rummaging behind the bin, until he found a wooden box. Opening his eyes, he dragged the object out, handing it to Jason. 

The box was about the size of Jason’s hands, a beautiful carving of flowers and vines adorning the lid. Jason put on a pair of gloves he’d stored in his jacket pocket that morning, pulling them on before he opened the box.

He nearly dropped the box.

“Nico?”

The psychic, now wearing a pair of leather gloves he must have brought with him, reached out, taking the box. His expression was neutral when Jason handed him the box, but it quickly turned to horror.

“That’s-“

“Call forensics,” Reyna told Jason, putting the box in an evidence bag after a cursory glance. “Nico, are you alright?”

“That’s a heart,” Nico stated simply. “That’s a human heart.”

“Close.”

“What.”

Reyna looked at the box with a sigh, peeling her gloves off and sealing the bag. “That’s two human hearts.”

Nico closed his eyes, exhaling loudly. “Well that explains it.”

The female detective raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“I was wondering why the guy from the bar was getting clearer the closure I got to the alley,” he described him to Reyna, who scribbled down the words Nico said. “Send it to the lab, I’m pretty sure that’s his heart.”

 

 

Nico was silent for most of the ride over to where they found Silena’s corpse, a haunted look on his face. He played with the chain around his neck.

“It’s a line of poetry.”

“What?” Jason asked, surprised by Nico’s sudden words.

“ _I always thought you’d be the one to move on,_  
 _When we fell apart, I knew you’d find happiness before me._  
 _And I knew we weren’t going to last,_  
 _But that didn’t make it hurt any less._  
 _I love like a fist around my heart,_  
 _And your hands always seemed just the right size to hold its broken bits together_ ,  
 _But your fist crashed through my rib cage,_  
 _And you ripped my heart out,_  
 _You left a crater in my chest nothing can fill_ ,  
 _And I don’t know how I’m supposed to go through these motions without you_ ,  
 _I have phantom pains in the slots of my life that you filled,_  
 _You were always the IV line I needed_ ,  
 _And now you’re just a piece of paper,_  
 _You’re an obituary_ ,  
 _And I don’t know what to do without your hand in mine,_  
 _Without your head on my shoulder_ ,  
 _Without my heart in my chest_.”

“Do you think-“

Nico looked out the window, watching the gun-metal gray city pass by them through the window. “I don’t believe in coincidences, Grace. The universe doesn’t work that way.” 

Jason reached over, laying a hand on the psychic’s shoulder. Nico put his hand over the detective’s fingers, acknowledging the other’s support, and they spent the rest of the car ride in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing the poetry for this is really fun, although the coding is fucking mental.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this fic is going to be real fucking dark. It has inspirations from the movie Se7en, so be warned. That being said, enjoy!

“She was right here,” Nico said, standing in front of a flaking stain of dried blood on the ground. His eyes were closed, had been from the moment he stepped inside, though the mostly empty room seemed much easier for him to navigate. “Not on the floor, though, it’s… You know those chairs they have at the dentist’s? Like those, but with straps on the arms.”

Reyna stayed a few feet behind Nico, waiting for details, while Jason stayed close by, in case Nico started heading for the stairs of the abandoned apartment. Plaster crunched underfoot as he circled the stain, looking at the epicenter of the dried blood. “Silena was here for maybe an hour, when that door,” he swung his arm out, nearly smacking Jason in the face, pointing to the front door. “Opened and the killer walked in. Silena was,” he took half a step back, his face contorting into a look of panic. “She couldn’t focus, for some reason. I think,” he fell silent, as if considering something, before he nodded, opening his eyes. “Someone took her contacts out.”

“Why?” Reyna asked, walking by.

Nico thought for a moment. “I think it’s a metaphor thing.”

“Another line of poetry?”

“ _And love must be the perfect prescription_ ,” Nico drawled. “ _Because nothing has ever been as clear as your face_.”

Jason looked up incredulously. “How have you memorized all of her poetry?”

“I read poetry to Caly at bedtime,” Nico shrugged. “She asks for Silena’s all the time.”

“You read slam poetry to a six year old?”

Nico made a non-committal noise. “I tried reading her kid stories, but she said the rudimentary vocabulary was beneath her. So I bought some poetry books.”

“Let’s get back on topic,” Reyna said, snapping the attention back to the crime scene they were currently standing in. “Any other details?”

Nico sighed, closing his eyes again. “Okay then, back on topic, Silena couldn’t see any features, really blurry and all, and the person walked around,” the psychic echoed their footsteps, a slow, prowling circle around the stain, where the chair once stood. “I’m getting a vague sense of what they’re saying, but it’s really distorted.”

“What are you getting?”

“Something about… Vain, I heard that word for sure, like ‘all you poets are just vain, petty things’, I think,” he touched a hand to his temples. “It’s like wading through syrup.”

He moved forward, standing where the head of the chair would’ve stood on that night. “Everything’s shifting around, I can’t get a clear perspective, I-“

The words died in the poets throat, his face frozen in mute terror. “Nico?” Jason asked, going over to the side of the psychic. Nico shook his head, stepping away from the space so fast he nearly ran into the wall behind him, had Jason not taken his arm. The younger poet’s eyes flew open, showing glazed over eyes caught in another time. He blinked, and they went from glazed-blue to warm brown, wide and wet with unshed tears. He looked up at Jason’s face, hugging his arms close to him with a shaky inhale.

“They,” he swallowed, looking at the ground. “They… Jesus, they cut her heart out while she was still alive.”

The three were silent, taking in that grim statement. Jason swore, taking in the scene with new horror, while his partner faced away, muttering something vaguely prayer-like under her breath. Nico looking out the boarded up window that stood on the other side of the room, at the crushed glass beneath it, the graffiti staining the walls like neon-colored blood. The apartment building had been condemned, vacated for years, and was already so far into decay that it was irreparable. The horror it had witnessed aged it, and the poet couldn’t imagine someone ever living in the building after what had happened.

“Is there anything else?” Reyna asked in a quiet, dull voice.

At first, Nico didn’t respond, staring out the window blankly. When he closed his eyes again, it was with a forlorn, resigned look.

“She bled out,” he said dully. “Shebled out, the killer put her heart in a box, and…” He straightened, pursing his lips. “They left something.”

He sightlessly pulled his gloves on, heading into the apartment’s kitchen. Jason hovered nearby, ready to pull him away from any dangers. Nico stopped at the window, looking around with glazed-over eyes, before deftly removing a piece of paper from the folded-up blinds. He blinked, eyes back into focus, and handing Jason the paper.

_~~Heart~~ _   
_Eyes_   
_Flesh_   
_Blood_   
_Teeth_

Jason read the sloppy note out loud. Nico was silent for a moment, before he turned and kicked a kitchen cabinet, shattering the molded door into splinters. “Fuck!”

“Nico, calm-“

The poet threw his hands in the air. “That’s a fucking checklist! They’re going to kill four other people.”

“Which is why we’re going to stop them,” Reyna replied calmly. “We’ll catch them. We just need as much information as possible.”

Nico’s expression was still pinched, radiating a seething rage. “I’m thinking 140-150 pounds, somewhere around 5”8.”

“How’d you get that?”

The psychic looked into the room where Silena died. “They straddled her waist when they cut her heart out, and I’m comparing it to my vast amounts of experience of having people on my waist,” he smiled mirthlessly, rubbing at his wrist in a self-conscious manner. “And they easily stuck a piece of paper up in the blinds without reaching up on their toes like I just did, so they must be a little taller than me, but they were reaching up, so not Jason’s height, but closer to him than to me. So 5”8 is an educated guess.”

Reyna nodded her respect to the poet. “That’s extremely impressive, Nico. Thank you.”

“Are we done?”

The female detective nodded, writing the last of her notes down and flipping the pad shut. “We’ll call you if we find anything.”

“Same,” he promised, pulling his gloves off and shaking Reyna’s offered hand.

Jason stepped forward. “I’ll drop you off.”

“Thanks.”

The three starting making their way out, when Reyna received a text. She checked her phone, sighing heavily. 

“They identified the heart,” she said, receiving twin looks from the two males, looks that screamed _go on_. “Homeless man by the name of Johnathan Reed. They checked CCTV, and he was last seen at the bar where Silena disappeared.”

Nico didn’t say a word, just silently left the building. The detectives shared a look, sharing a thought in the way only people who’d spent a lifetime together could.

_Are we doing the right thing, dragging him into this?_

Jason followed Nico out of the building.

 

 

“Senseless.”

Jason jumped. They’d been driving for nearly half an hour in New York’s stop-and-go traffic, and Nico hadn’t said a word up to that point. He cast a glance over to the poet, who was staring out the windshield, playing with the chain around his neck. 

“I mean,” he sighed. “She didn’t deserve this. It’s so fucking dumb, I hate it. Why would anyone do this to a person?”

Jason didn’t answer at first. “Killers don’t make sense, Nico. Don’t try to explain crazy.”

“I,” he threw his head back against his seat with a curse. “I hope they trip and get fucking tetanus.” 

Jason rolled his eyes. “You believe in karma?”

“I believe the universe is a fickle bitch and doesn’t care who they’re screwing over.”

“That’s nihilistic,” the detective retorted. 

Nico shrugged. “I’m going to miss her.”

The abruptness of the comment left Jason reeling. “What was that one poem you mentioned earlier?”

The poet smiled sadly, looking down at the chain around his neck as he recited the poem.

“ _Love’s like a punch to the face_ ,  
 _It knocks me off my feet, and I fall._  
 _Or else, love is like a fever_ ,  
 _Because it burns like a wildfire on my skin._  
 _But no, love is a butterfly_ ,  
 _Beautiful, but oh so fragile, and oh so fleeting._   
_And love must be the perfect prescription_ ,   
_Because nothing has ever been as clear as your face_.  
 _Yet, nothing says love like you_ ,  
 _So I’ll just say it too._ ”

Jason smiled. “That was beautiful.”

“Yeah,” Nico agreed, eyes damp. “Her memorial is in a few days. They’re reading her poetry and holding a candle light vigil.”

“Are you going?”

Nico nodded, smiling humorlessly. “We always made jokes about going to each other’s funerals and keeping the people honest. I never thought,” he scrubbed at the tears pouring down his face. “I’m going to read the sappiest poem of hers, see if she comes back as a ghost just to kick my ass.”

“That’s the spirit,” Jason said, reaching over and squeezing Nico’s shoulder. They talked about poetry the rest of the way over to Nico’s, both ignoring the psychic’s tears, enjoying the calm before the storm of the next kill.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's see who's as obsessed with poetry as I am! See if you can name the movie that Silena references in her poem.

Chapter Four

“How do we know we’re doing the right thing?” Jason asked, sitting down in Reyna’s office. 

“Elaborate,” she replied, tapping away at her computer. She had her reading glasses perched on the edge of her nose, but upon meeting Jason’s eyes, she removed them and folded the arms in, setting them on her desk.

Jason put his head in his hands and sighed heavily. “He’s a civilian. He doesn’t have any type of training on how to deal with these types of things. I’m worried we’ll push him too far. Yesterday, he was having a lot of problems from the get go.”

“I understand,” she replied, exhaling lowly. “But Nico knows what he’s doing. He could’ve told us to leave at any time, and we couldn’t have forced him to help us. He’s tougher than you think.” 

“But what if he’s not?”

Reyna looked as though what she was about to say was weighing her down significantly, despite how certainly she said them.

“Grace, we can’t afford to spare this kid. Either he helps us figure this case out, or more people die. And I’m going to sound horrible, because there is no way to say this nicely,” she sighed, closing her eyes. “If it comes down to helping Nico, or preventing another four murders, I’m sacrificing the kid for the greater good.” 

Jason stood up, feeling a sudden need for fresh air. Still, he lingered in the doorway.

“I really hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Reyna nodded, but her disbelief was evident. “God help us.”

 

Jason arrived at his own apartment, closing the door and staring at the wood for a moment. He heard a gentle ringing behind him, and turned around to see his border collie, Argonaut, starring up at him, her head titled to the side. Jason sat down just before the door, holding his arms open. Argonaut jumped up and trotted over, pushing her nose into the detective’s shoulder. Jason held onto her for a moment, closing his eyes and letting out all the stress and horror of the morning. Argonaut let Jason cling to her, wagging her tail softly against his knee.

“Sorry girl,” the detective finally said when he pulled back, petting his beloved animal companion on the soft black fur between her ears. She barked happily, following the detective as he stood and went into the kitchen to feed her.

The morning had been horrible. Just hearing Nico talk about his family was hard enough, but then watching him struggle through watching a friend of his dying in such a horrible way. Whenever he closed his eyes, Jason kept seeing Nico’s face crumple.

This case was the kind that detectives spent their entire career lamenting. He’d seen good men and women brought to their knees by unsolved murders, the kind that crawled under skin and curled up in the back of the mind. Jason had accepted the idea of this job killing him. When he was a rookie cop, he’d taken a bullet to the side, and he knew from that moment that he was living on borrowed time. And he accepted that. He lived alone, didn’t date, had no family and few friends outside of the Force. The only selfish thing he allowed himself was a dog, and even then, he paid for a dog walker to come by every few days, worst case scenario. Jason was comforted by the fact that his martyrdom wouldn’t hurt anyone but the few people he let himself love and be loved by. Hell, he could drop dead tomorrow and Reyna would mourn him for a day and be back in the office the next.

But Nico wasn’t like that. Nico had a roommate, and a daughter, and a best friend, and a host of companions and lovers and followers. He had ties to so many people that there was no way to extract him from the world without leaving a mess. And Jason didn’t know how to ask someone like that to risk it all.

Argonaut shoved her nose into Jason’s calf, reminding the detective that he was supposed to be doing the ever important task of feeding her. He smiled, pouring kibble into her bowl. He made his own dinner in an almost trance-like state, eating in his kitchen and washing the used dishes, before settling down on his couch with Argonaut to watch some TV.

He was about to got to bed, when Nico texted him the details of Silena’s memorial poetry reading, saying that it was the next day. There was a little message from Nico at the bottom of the text that Jason read with a small smile. 

_I know you didn’t know Silena, but everyone’s welcome. Maybe you’ll find out you’ve always been a poet on the inside._

Jason had gotten Nico to admit that he’d made Frank tell him his number. They’d texted a few times, And Jason was admittedly really amused at how sarcastic the poet could be over text.

_I’ll be sure to break out in soliloquy at the door._

_Just no Dr. Sues. They might just kill you if you bust out the rhyming couplets._

_Then pen is mightier than the sword._

_He said, as if a majority of these people couldn’t kill you with said pen._

Jason laughed, scarring Argonaut, who’d been sleeping on his lap. _Really?_

_Sad poets are scary. Everyone’s tired and drunk. Well, more tired and drunk._

Jason stayed up way past what he normally would, texting Nico. Before he knew it, he was checking his clock, and it was one in the morning. 

_I’m guessing you just woke up a little bit okay?_

Nico took a moment to respond. _I have some really bad insomniac tendencies. I’m pretty sure I’m nocturnal._

_Go to bed you owl._

_Whatever, eagle._

Jason went to bed a while after that, without realizing that he’d begun to extend a thread out to the poet, drawing himself into the complicated web that was Nico di Angelo’s life.

 

Jason arrived at the bar a little later than he was expected, Nico already having read his piece, but he sat in the front row with Nico and Ethan Nakamura, fellow poet and the psychic’s closest friend. The bar was dark, the lights dimmed, but the crowd made up for it, combatting the dark with candles scattered over candles and the front of the stage. They were an assorted range of colors, each holding a symbolic meaning. Black was, most obviously, for mourning, but there were dozens of pink candles, meaning love and passion. White dotted the crowd, symbolizing purity and beauty, while blue stood for serenity. A few minutes after Jason arrived, Ethan stood and took the stage to deliver a haunting performance of _The Widow’s Lament,_ one of Silena’s most acclaimed pieces. Jason could understand the appeal: Silena’s writing was beautiful, and the presentation was an art in its own respect. The detective saw Nico grasp Ethan’s hand under the table when he returned, eyes going misty. They were close, not just in the way Ethan curled his arm around Nico’s shoulder, but in the way that the tension that had built up in their shoulders when they were apart seemed to instantly melt when they were close. Jason could see a familiar, platonic intimacy between the poets, the type he’d been denying himself for years. At the end of the reading, Nico untangled himself from the one-eyed poet, wiped his eyes, and took the stage.

“Thank you to everyone who came, and to everyone who read a poem. Tonight, we’re selling copies of Silena’s book, and donating the proceeds to the program that she volunteered at every weekend. Silena worked with inner-city kids to encourage and develop literacy and speech, and she was always trying to recruit future poets,” Jason saw a few people across the room smile, and he found himself imitating them. “So, please pick up a copy of her book, I have one, and I read them to my daughter every night. If no one else has a poem to read,” he paused, but no one spoke up. “Alright, thank you again for coming, and stay safe Goodnight.”

As he left the stage, the bar broke out into quiet chatter. Nico returned to the table, smiling when Ethan touched his arm lightly in acknowledgement. 

“So, what did you think?” he asked, turning his attention to Jason.

The detective smiled. “It was really amazing. I see why you love this.”

“Poetry is beautiful,” Nico agreed.

Ethan spoke up, speaking directly to Jason for the first time. “Not many people still think of poetry as an art. I’ve always said that one night could change that.”

The detective nodded. “I was very impressed,” he agreed. “I wish I could’ve met Silena.”

Ethan and Nico nodded, still clasping hands under the table. They stayed and talked for a while, before Jason had to leave. On his way out, he found where they were selling copies of Silena’s book and bought one, leaving a generous tip in the donation jar. He headed home, but stayed up for a while, reading the poems inside. They painted the story of a girl who’d fallen in love with someone she described as ‘ _the light of stars and the heart of a kindred king’_ , but lost him all too soon, and Jason was enthralled, soaking in every word.

The last poem he read, before saving his place and heading to bed, was his favorite.

_Your words have always been like sugar to me,_  
 _Your hands like missing puzzle pieces,_  
 _Your mouth like the perfect key,_  
 _And your eyes like nothing ever known._  
 _I will sit here and play the Shakespeare_ ,  
 _Sonnet after sonnet written all for you_ ,  
 _And for as long as I live_  
 _As long as I can breathe in the honeyed air that is our love_ ,  
 _I will be whole_.  
 _But he was right when he told me to be careful,_  
 _When he said I was not in Wonderland._  
 _But that does not mean I cannot write about you._  
 _Because poetry comes with its own pulse._  
 _You will be present in every line, every word, every beat_  
 _You will always be my muse, my darling, my world._  
 _I take solace in the message you carved into gold for me,_  
 _That love can move even the stars._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is slightly longer than the other chapters, but I didn't want to break it up.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I was gone for a week, but I don't remember Thursday! Cough syrup is the best thing for colds, I'm feeling beter now. So I bring you a new chapter.

Jason drove to Nico’s apartment at nine in the morning, patching together his condolences. He didn’t really know what he would say, until the seconds between knocking and Nico answering were done, and a very tired looking poet was greeting him.

“Morning Grace, little warning next time you come over at the crack of dawn,” the psychic greeted, yawning into his hand. He looked exhausted, wearing nothing but black, owl printed pajama bottoms slung low on his hips, and his hair was a frizzy mess, sticking out and pointing in every direction. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“They’ve found another dead poet.”

Instantly, Nico went from tired and lax, to alert and apprehensive. His slouch straightened, his shoulders tensed, and his eyes, which had previously been blinking heavily in an almost owlish fashion, were wide and dilated and brimming with fear. “Who?” Nico choked out, one arm gripping the door frame for stability.

“Octavian Augustus.”

Nico sighs heavily, his eyes falling shut for a moment. “Goddammit,” he swore under his breath, holding the door open. “Come on in, I’ll make a pot of coffee.”

The detective agreed, stepping inside the apartment. He’d never officially been inside the apartment before, the only time close being when he picked Nico up that first time. Now, he was getting a much better view of the psychic’s home. The couch was leather, cracked and worn from use, but soft and obviously well loved. The coffee table was covered in papers, all drawn on, Caly’s work most likely. Most of the pictures were obviously Racheal and Nico, but some were of a blonde woman and another dark haired guy, her biological parents, Jason concluded. The living room showed many signs of a child, from the drawing to the framed pictures that hung on every wall. A bookshelf near the door coveted severl frames photos, including one of Nico, Percy and Annabeth. The three were sitting on the couch, Percy on the left, Nico leaning on his shoulder, and Annabeth sitting on the former’s lap, her legs stretched out over the poets. It was a candid shot: none of the three were looking at the camera, just relaxed, looking so incredibly comfortable around one another. 

Nico came back a few moments later, sporting a hoodie and holding two mugs of coffee. He handed Jason the white mug with the words ‘I may desire we be better strangers’ printed on the side, while he kept the blue mug that had little seashells with party hats. “Fathers’ day presents,” Nico excused when he saw Jason’s raised eyebrow. “Black okay?”

“Yeah, thanks,” he replied, taking a drink of the warm, bitter drink. He sat down on the couch at Nico’s prompting, not knowing exactly what to say. “Did you know Octavian?”

Nico shrugged, looking down at his mug. “I know just about every poet in the city. Octavian was a little out there, and kind of a huge dick, but I mean,” he trailed off, looking up at the detective. “You want to take me to the scene?”

“When you’re ready, if you need a minute-“

The poet scoffed. “I’ll tell you now, Grace, just because I knew the guy, doesn’t mean we were close or anything. In fact, most of the time, if we were in the same room, the asshole wouldn’t go five minutes without saying something. Always trying to be the smartest guy in the room.”

Despite his words, Nico did seem a little distant, twirling the mug in his hands. If anything, he looked like he was trying to convince himself that he was fine. Jason knew the feeling.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Nico sighed, finishing his coffee. “Let me get dressed.”

 

Glass crushed under Nico’s boots as he explored the apartment. It was like the last scene: empty, decaying apartment in an abandoned complex. Jason could think of half a dozen across the city, all with squatters to provide the second half of the murders, the part that still confused him. Nico searched the entire block first, following phantom trails that he eventually decided were the homeless persons. Finally, he entered the room were Octavian was murdered. Reyna followed him diligently, while Jason stayed by his elbow, leading him around tight corners and over sharp debris.

“How did you see the other day with your eyes open?” Jason had asked in the car, catching the psychic off guard. He’d shrugged it off then, answering with some vague comment about looking professional. When Nico viewed the murder of Octavian, however, he did so with his eyes open. Jason could see why he kept them closed: the milky white film that set over the poet’s eyes as he looked into the past was unnerving, to say the least.

“Woke up here,” he pointed to a spot that looked vaguely in the center of the room. “Same chair Silena was in. Like, the exact same, blood stained and all. Disorientated, no glasses, they said something, I’m getting words,” he touched his temple, eyebrows scrunching together. “Um, something like… This is how I see poetry, it’s fuzzy, I-“

And that’s another reason why Jason understood the poet closing his eyes when he was having a vision. During the day, Nico used sarcasm and wit and poetry to hide his emotions, and even when he was upset or depressed, he was still hiding himself. But while he was seeing the past, he had no walls, every minute emotion showing like a beacon. His blank eyes widened, lips parted, breath hitched, and Jason saw panic bloom over every feature, unrestrained. Reyna shared a look with Jason, one that asked what horrors the civilian was being presented with now.

“They burned him alive. Oh, wow, that’s,” he blinked, stepping back and covering his mouth. “Oh god.”

Jason reached out to reassure Nico, but the boy only flinched away, still in the vision. “They’re watching. They’re just sitting there, _watching_.”

Nico blinked, his eyes unclouded, and left the room, retreated further into the apartment. Both detectives heard retching sounds from the other room. At one point, Jason thought he might’ve heard muffled sobbing, but it was too quiet to tell. 

Nico returned a few seconds later with a note in his now-gloved hands. He was staring at it, obviously unnerved by the contents. When Jason asked what it said, the poet wordlessly handed it over, his hand shaking.

_~~Heart~~ _  
_Eyes_  
 _~~Flesh~~ _  
_Blood_  
 _Teeth_

_Why don’t we have some fun? Let’s mix things up, shall we?_

Jason nearly crumpled the note in his hands. That’s the one thing he hated about serial killers, the one thing he never really understood: how little they valued human life. They weren’t people, they were objects. Items. Nothing more than colorful props. 

“Where’s the box?” Nico asked, looking over at Reyna. She sighed, lowering her notebook.

“We found it behind the bar, like last time,” she explained, pulling out her phone. “I took a few pictures if you’d like-“

“Yes please.”

She handed him the device. The first picture was of an ornate wooden box, like the previous one, this time carved with animals: two bears under a canopy of pine trees. He studied it, the exact poem coming to mind. He switched to the next picture, closing his eyes and handing the device back after a moment. 

“Flesh,” he whispered, then turned on his heel and sent his fist through a wall. Jason jumped, watching the younger boy dust pink-tinged plaster from his split knuckles with a blank look.

“Are you okay?”

“Black,” Nico responded simply. “The light,” he flinched at the word, and Jason realized he was talking about the fire that had consumed the dead poet, “It reflected off their hair. Black hair. Either pulled back or extremely short.”

“Anything-“

“No,” he answered, watching the blood drip down his fingers, onto the damp, dirty floor. Another rotting piece to wither with the building around it. “No, I can’t see anything, and I can’t,” he made a loud, frustrated noise. “I can’t see anything! Why can’t I see them?” 

Jason took a step forward, but Nico had whipped around to face him. Nico’s face was contorted into such a furious and agonized expression, tears streaming down his face. “If I can’t tell you who this person is,” he choked out, “My friends die. I know everyone in the poetry community. This will always be personal to me, and I can’t even see the fucker who’s doing it.”

The apartment was silent, except for Nico’s raged breaths. Jason and Reyna eyed each other. _Still worth it?_ Jason asked with his eyes. Reyna averted her eyes, but not before Jason could sdee the obvious _yes._

 

_Take a swift, hot long drag of what could be my flesh_ ,  
 _Bet you wouldn’t know the taste, how subtle the variation is,_  
 _Between cancer and death, I bet you taste pennies when you speak_ ,  
 _Copper laces your tongue like the dress you never fit in right,_  
 _Like the one he never bought you._  
 _Touch my neck, I bet ice melts when you watch_ ,  
 _When your mouth fits over my neck, I don’t bruise,_  
 _I fester, you rotting Madonna._

________-Octavian Augustus, from the Bitchy Coffee Table Poetry Book._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I was sick, I was coming up with ideas for a new story. What do you guys think about a story with Ethan Nakamura/Nico di Angelo as the main pairing? Let me know in the comments.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to my grandfather's funeral in a few hours, so this chapter was delayed by roadtrip.I'm an emotional writer, so depending on my mood, you might get the next chapter early.

Jason gave Nico some time, some room to breathe while he worked through the anger and sadness of the second poet killing. The psychic still texted him, mostly about poets and alcohol, a few invitations to go out drinking that Jason declined politely. Honestly, he was worried about Nico, who’d turned so sharply from mourning to enraged after seeing Octavian’s death. Jason knew what fear did to people: that’s how he’d lost his first partner. But this wasn’t the blind panic that ended up with Piper in the ground, no, this was a low simmer, a slow boil, one that consumed with time.

Jason didn’t want to bury another friend. 

_Everything smells like smoke,_ Nico texted to Jason the day after going to the crime scene. _I close my eyes and everything’s burning. I wrote four poems in the last hour and all of them are about dead people. I just want to read them to Silena._

Jason didn’t know how to respond to those texts. He and Reyna had another conversation about Nico, but settled, yet again, on using him and his abilities, despite Jason’s best protests. They asked him to relive the memories, scanning for any missed details. Each time he folded in on himself, like it took something from him each time. Nico seemed so sullen, so beaten down, and every day was worse and worse.

_I keep hoping I’ll wake up and this will have never happened. Octavian’s second book came out today. Everything was finished, ready to publish, and now he doesn’t even get to see it._

Jason just hoped that Nico wouldn’t get too beaten down by this. Finally, Nico made him another offer after five days of not seeing each other.

_There’s a poetry night at Centurion’s tonight. I’m going to make sure everyone’s okay. Want to come?_

Jason didn’t go drinking with people, deeming it as a purely social activity. An activity that people who abstained from social actions didn’t generally participate in. But this was technically work, what Nico was asking. Protecting people was his job. 

_I’ll be there in twenty minutes._

 

When Jason arrived at the bar, Nico was already intoxicated. He greeted Jason with a happy smile, leaning into the side of a girl with long, dark hair spilling over her shoulders. Ethan was on his other side, laughing at something Nico said. Jason realized that this was as much social as it was professional, and sat down across from the poet.

“Hey, Jay,” Nico greeted, leaning back in his chair. His female companion had her arm stretched out across the back of his chair, her low-cut shirt exposing the two scars that ran up the column of her throat, from collar to ear, on her left side. “This,” he gestured to the girl on his left, “Is Drew. She’s an English major at NYU. This is her first poetry reading”

“Jason Grace,” he introduced, shaking her hand. “NYPD.”

She raised an eyebrow, her mouth shaping an amused smirk. “Cop?”

“Detective,” he corrected. 

“Oh,” he responded, leaning forward on the arm not around Nico’s shoulders. “Very noir. How’d you and Nico meet?”

Nico answered this one, twirling an empty glass in his hand. “We’re working on a case, and I’m consulting.”

She turned to him, eyes alight with excitement. “Oh, you didn’t tell me you’re working with the cops. Is it dangerous?”

Nico shrugged, but Ethan blew his attempt at being suave by laughing his ass off. Jason couldn’t help but join the one-eyed poet when he saw Nico’s narrowed eyes. 

“Okay, yeah, I’m being lame,” he finally agreed when he saw Ethan’s look. “But yeah, I’m not really supposed to talk about it. At least, not until Detective Grace gives me the go ahead.”

Jason nodded his agreement, folding his hands on the table. “Nothing personal, but we do it to keep the reporters from hyper-sensationalizing the case. The last thing we need is a media circus.”

Drew nodded her acceptance, just as Ethan’s name was called. He stood, putting his half-empty glass down on the table and heading to the stage of the cozy little bar. He greeted the crowd, adjusted the mic, and then, launched into a poem.

“ _Hold my hands out, trace my fingers._  
 _These palms know how it feels to surrender._  
 _Know the press and pain of allowing defeat._  
 _These eyes know what anguish looks like,_  
 _I’ve seen men crumple before me._  
 _Death has a face I won’t soon forget._  
 _This lips know the bitter taste of defeat,_  
 _The copper tang of blood against my teeth,_  
 _I know how heavy bleach is in my mouth_.  
 _But I’d rather lose all sense of touch,_  
 _Tear out my fucking eyes,_  
 _Let me drown in the taste of despair._  
 _Just remember that these feelings are all meaningless,_  
 _Pain means nothing to someone who knows nothing but._  
 _Just don’t sell me lust in a box marked love._  
 _Give me a little more credit._  
 _I’m a little tougher than I look._  
 _Pain has a way of tempering humans._  
 _So leave me here, I’ll be fine._  
 _What you want to elicit in me I know well._  
 _After all, a scrape is nothing to Prometheus._ ”

The bar broke into applause. Nico sent a beaming smile to his best friend and Drew, obviously new to this, offered a compliment to the poet once he returned to the table.

“Truly haunting, Ethan,” she told him, gushing like Jason had on that first night around poets. “It was very exciting.” 

Ethan nodded, smiling into his glass. “ _Poetry is the art of spinning pain into gold_ ,” he quoted.

“ _In that respect, poetry is the closet art we have to alchemy_ ,” Nico replied, and the two poets shared a crooked grin. Drew and Jason were lost, but luckily, Nico caught the confusion.

“Two years ago, a group of slam poets wrote a book called _The Slam Poet’s Manifesto_ ,” he started, already laughing. He’d gotten another drink while Ethan was making his way back to the table, and sipped idly from the amber liquid in his glass. “It was supposed to be this beautiful novel all about what makes a poem slam, and how the art of poetry, though dying, is still this amazing and inspirational species and blah, blah.”

Ethan jumped in, looking more excited than Jason had ever seen him, which really just meant a small, un-ironic smile. “Everyone was so excited, and then it came out and everybody hated it. Honestly, it’s like they tried to write an entire instruction manual in verse, but without any kind of framing or order. It was an overdramatic disaster, and everyone hated it.”

“So of course we learned every line,” his friend smirked into his glass.

They grinned at each other in a way that only best friend could, sharing some rose-tinted memory. Jason nodded his understanding, while Drew was already tapping away on her phone. She scanned her eyes over the text, eyes alight with amusement.

“Oh wow, this is,” she laughed into her hand. ”How’d this ever get published?”

“The world’s funny like that, huh?” Nico mused aloud, staring into his drink. Ethan and Jason shared a look, one that Drew seemed to miss entirely, continuing her affectionate contact with the poet.

The night wound down, most poets leaving after the open mic ended. Jason stayed for a while longer, casting glances at the bar every few minutes. Despite the distraction, he was also thoroughly involved in the conversation, chatting excitedly with the group like he hadn’t done in years.

Eventually, all the other poets were gone, just their table having remained. The bar transitioned quite naturally into a club as the hours ticked by, the music growing too loud for intimate conversation. That’s when Jason decided to take his leave, although the others stayed, assuring him that they’d get home okay. As Jason walked out into the night air, he found himself smiling to himself. Despite his reservations, he really liked spending time with Nico.

_He really is a friend,_ he thought to himself, with equal parts excitement and dread. 

_I’m so fucked._

 

“Are you absolutely certain?” Jason asked into his phone, running his hand through his hair.

“ _Afraid so, Grace. The autopsy report just came back._ ”

Jason sat on his couch heavily. “How the fuck do we tell him?”

Reyna was silent. Jason closed his eyes, overcome with dread and shock and a little terror. “Fuck.” Reyna agreed, and from the way she said it, Jason could tell she was shaking her head in defeat. Jason hung up, grabbing his keys and leaving his apartment. He had to go and tell Nico, he deserved to hear it from him first.

Ethan Nakamura was dead.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's kind of graphic. There will be further explanations to Nico's visions in the next chapter, so be on the look out. We're getting into the real psychological bits here, where we really get to know the killer. Won't this be fun?

Jason knocked on Nico’s door, half hoping he was out and wouldn’t answer. But like every time he knocked, the poet answered, in an oversized blue hoodie and a pair of black, skull printed pajama bottoms. In the hand not holding the door open was a neon yellow mug with little apples painted up and down the side, smelling strongly of black coffee, steaming hot, obviously made recently. He looked exhausted, his hair sticking up and fluffy looking, like he’d just rolled out of bed moments before Jason knocked, and judging from the bags under his eyes, that seemed likely.

“You know, most people call before they come over,” Nico mumbled, rubbing his eye. “What’s todays news, Grace?”

“There was another murder.”

Nico’s brow tightened, and the lines of exhausted on his face grew sharper. “Who?” he asked simply, clutching his coffee mug impossible tighter.

Jason looked up, meeting Nico’s eyes. He _really_ didn’t want to say his next words. Nico looked exhausted, and Jason couldn’t help but blame himself for that: he’d suggested the consultation. This was all on him. 

“It was Ethan. Ethan Nakamura,” Jason finally answered. “I’m so sorry.”

For a moment, everything was still. Nico seemed frozen, staring up at Jason as if daring him to call his bluff. Then, Jason heard the crash as the mug dropped from Nico’s hand, shattering on impact right next to the poet’s feet and dosing him in scalding coffee.

He didn’t even seem to feel it. He was just staring, hand still up as if clutching the mug, eyes filling so rapidly with tears they traced down his cheeks faster than bullets. Suddenly, his face crumpled, and he was covering his mouth with both hands, sobbing like a crash of thunder.

Jason held his hand out and Nico latched onto it, stepping over cracked ceramic to burry his face in Jason’s chest while his slender frame shook with harsh sobs. Jason maneuvered him out of the still warm puddle of coffee, practically carrying the inconsolable psychic, moving him to the couch. When Nico pulled back from Jason’s chest, he was scrubbing his eyes.

“Fuck, everything fucking sucks, I hate everything,” he said, looking down at his feet with a frustrated noise, putting his head in his hands. “Fuck, this is all my fault-“

“Nico, this isn’t your fault,” Jason interrupted, when Nico shook his head almost violently. 

“I could _see_ the killer,” he sobbed into his hands. “But I was so afraid of straining myself, because I’m getting these migraines like I did before I had the seizure, and I knew that if I kept pushing, I’d-“

Jason took his hands, because while Nico was speaking, he had started scratching at his arms so hard the detective was worried they’d bleed. “Don’t,” Jason said, firm and steady. “No one wants you to get hurt over this. You have no obligating to do that to yourself.”

Nico shook his head, looking away from Jason. “But I could have stopped it. I could’ve-“

“You don’t know that,” Jason said, pulling Nico into his shoulder. “I know it hurts, and I know you wish it was you, but you’re still here, and you can still solve this.”

Nico shook his head, but didn’t say another word, just cried into the detective’s chest. Jason held him close, letting him vent out this incredible sorrow that the poet was drowning in.

 

 

It was three days before Nico finally called Jason back to say he’d go to the crime scene. He went to go find Nico at his apartment, finding the poet sitting on the stairwell three floors below his apartment with a mostly empty bottle of vodka sitting beside him on the stairs, bobbing his head. Unlike most of the other times he’d seen Nico in street clothes, the poet wasn’t wearing black or leather, but a thin blue shirt and the bright red skinny jeans Jason had seen him wearing that morning in the coffee shop. Aside from those few moments he spent shirtless when the detective came over that one time, this was the first time that Jason was seeing Nico’s bare arms. He couldn’t see them clearly from the way Nico had his arms folded and bent, but he did see the bracelet he had covering his right arm, and he was worried about what he’d find under those.

Jason cleared his throat and Nico pulled a midnight-colored earbud to match his hair from his ear. “Jay!” he greeted, standing up and pulling his other earbud out. 

“Are you drunk?” the detective asked, eyeing the bottle at Nico’s feet suspiciously.

Nico shrugged, stuffing his headphones in his pocket. “I tried calling you sober, but I kept crying, so I thought alcohol would help,” he explained. “And then I thought I really shouldn’t go to the crime scene sober, because that’s going to really suck, and so I had a few drinks, yeah, but I’m fine.”

Jason very much doubted this. The poet was swaying on his feet, dark bags under his eyes, chipped black nail polish on his nails and bandages wrapped around his knuckles. But there was a certain desperation in his red-rimmed eyes, one that made Jason loathe to tell the poet no.

“Alright,” he agreed. “Just tell me if you need to take a step back.”

Nico nodded, picking up the bottle and finishing off the small amount still left with a grimace. “No time like the present.”

 

Jason knew it was going to be bad when Nico didn’t even make the effort to close his eyes, just letting his pupils fog over while he looked over the scene. It was just like the others: a decrepit, abandoned apartment building, an empty, rotting apartment, and a blood stained floor.

“They stayed on Ethan’s left,” he said, standing approximately where the killer would have. “Same whiny bullshit about aesthetics, talking about the evil of pride and avarice or some shit.”

He moved around the blood stained ground. “It’s all really foggy, I should’ve come here earlier.”

Jason almost said something, but Reyna shook her head, so he kept silent. Nico continued.

“Okay, so they did the weird hip-straddle thing, and then they,” Nico immediately cut off, his face frozen. Jason reached out to touch him, when Nico suddenly screamed, covering his eyes with his hands and backing away. Jason followed him, grabbing Nico’s wrists when he saw the psychic’s fingers curling into fists, just to see Nico’s eyes wide open and covered in that grainy film that meant he was still in a vision. He almost expected it to be worse: Nico had been screaming like his eyes were being torn from their sockets.

“I can’t see, it’s dark, and,” Nico choked, trying to pry his hands from the detectives grip to no avail. “Oh god, it hurts, she’s fucking gouging his eye out, oh god, she keeps-“

He pulled away from Jason with impressive, new found strength and rushed to the corner to throw up. The poet was shaking from head to toe, eyes still glazed over, as he seemed to be still caught in the vision. Jason, more than anything, wanted to go over and shake him out of it. 

“Oh god,” he whispered when he’d emptied the contents of his stomach. “Oh fucking god, she went through his fucking eye and into his brain,” he told the corner, staring intently at the wall.

“The killer is a she?” Reyna asked, looking up from her notes. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I finally got a clear listen to her voice,” Nico answered. “Ethan could hear everything,” he covered his moth for a moment and nearly retched into the corner again, but seemed to gain him composure. “He heard everything, before the shock killed him.” Nico sobbed into his hand, closing his eyes and then opening them, film-free. “She was wearing heels, but not too high guessing from the sound. I’m thinking 5”4, four inch heels at the most.”

Reyna looked up from her notes. “5”8 exactly, then,” she said, referring to Nico’s earlier calculations.

Nico nodded, stumbling away from the corner. “The paper is in the bathroom this time, behind the mirror. Jason, can you-“

“I’ll go get it.”

While Jason was gone, Nico started scratching at his bare arms, turning the skin red. Reyna was about to check on him, when her partner came back, handing Nico the note with a concerned look.

~~_Heart_ ~~   
_~~Flesh~~ _   
_~~Eyes~~ _   
_Blood_   
_Teeth_

_Psychic: I’ve been watching you, and I have to say, I’m impressed. But I’m also getting pretty bored. Why don’t we make this fun, cutie? Write me a poem, or I kill two of your friends, and then make another list, and you’ll definitely be on that one. But you won’t do that, so pick: blood or teeth. My poem better be good :)_

“Fucking psychopath,” Nico hissed, his hands trembling. His eyes suddenly welled with tears, and when he looked up, Jason saw pure terror in his eyes. “Oh god,” he whispered, dropping the paper so he could cover his mouth. “They’re going to fucking kill me. I’m going to die.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No poem this chapter! Only horror and fear, because I'm evil.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have the biggest fucking headache right now, but I played through the pain to get you guys this chapter. Don't ever say I don't love you guys <3

Back in the car, Nico played with the bracelets on his wrist, spinning the colorful beads around and snapping them down over the skin of his wrist. The small jangles they made seemed to keep time with the poet’s heart, and eventually, curiosity overwhelmed the detective.

“What are they from?” he asked, gesturing his head toward the bright beads up Nico’s arm.

The poet looked up for a second, then back down at the colored expanse. “Prayer beads,” he said, holding up his other arm, the one with the tattoo. “Ethan gave me this one,” he pulled up a string of jade, fuchsia and gold painted beads, “right after I got my tattoo. Racheal gave me these on my birthday,” he unwound another string, this one with plain wooden beads, each carved with a different wood. The last one, sporting all different shades of blue, he ran his fingers over, almost reverently. “And these were from Percy. He found out I liked them, and when he came back for shore leave, he brought these back from a monastery. I’ve been collecting them for years.”

Jason nodded, admiringly the way that Nico expertly wound the beads around his wrist so as to make it look like one bracelet, woven around each other beautiful. “I like them.”

Nico nodded, slowly unraveling them until he held three necklaces, and his arm was bare. Jason glanced over, surprised by what he saw.

He expected scars, a reasonable excuse for Nico to constantly cover the skin of his wrist, but that wasn’t it. Instead, on the pale skin of Nico’s wrist, there was another tattoo, this one a simple design in indelible black ink. It was an elegant infinity symbol, shaded to add depth. 

“I stopped believing in infinity after Annabeth and Percy, but I didn’t have the heart to remove it,” he explained when he saw Jason eyeing it. “But recently, I’ve had a new found appreciation for my mother’s faith.”

“Yeah?”

Nico nodded, looking out the window of the car. “My imminent mortality has made me philosophical.”

The detective gripped the steering wheel in his hands. “You aren’t going to die, Nico,” he told the poet. Nico just smiled sadly, looking at his wrist. “Aren’t you scared?”

“Of course I am,” the poet answered, looking anywhere but at Jason. “I’m going to be murdered by a psychopath that may or may not be hot for me. But honestly? I can’t do anything if I’m panicking a lot,” he explained with a shrug. “Also, I’m still quite drunk.”

Jason laughed at that, breaking the tension that he’d felt coiling under his skin. “Let’s get you home, Mr. AA.”

Nico smiled, but years on the force let Jason know that there was tension behind it. He didn’t mention it, because whatever Nico was telling himself to be brave, Jason didn’t want to ruin it.

 

Nico called him one morning, waking him up at five-thirty. Jason answered the phone to Nico rambling on about something in a low voice.

“So figured something out last night,” Nico finally said when Jason cleared his throat. “Like, when I see the visions, I look through the eyes of whoever’s there, because there aren’t any object in there that the killer or any of the victims touched, which is why I freaked out the other day. It was literally like I was getting my own eye stabbed out,” he took a pause to drink something, and Jason hoped it was coffee rather than liquor. “So I was trapped in this empty, blank shell, which was really fucking terrifying, so I had to switch to the killer. And then I noticed that whoever killed Ethan, they did it at a weird time.”

“How so,” Jason asked, sitting up in bed. Argonaut woke up from where she was curled up next to Jason, nudging her nose into Jason’s hip.

“So they killer did most of their murders in the middle of the day, which I could tell because of the light coming in through all the boarded up windows. But Ethan? When I looked around the apartment, I saw that there were windows, but in my vision, it was dark. Like, super fucking dark. Which means that they killed Ethan in the middle of the night.”

Jason nodded. “Why would they change their pattern up?”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Nico said, rather loudly. “But then I was thinking about when Ethan was killed, and I realized that if he disappeared that night, then he was murdered the next night, because he was sober at the time. So he was alive but caught up at the apartment all Sunday.”

Jason blinked, petting Argonaut thoughtfully. “So the killer was doing something Sunday. Church?”

“Maybe,” the poet answered, and Jason heard him moving around, doing something in his apartment. “But whatever they were doing, they were held up for most of the day. It may be useless, but-“

“Nico, when’s the last time you slept?” Jason suddenly asked, catching the rambling poet off guard.

At first, he didn’t respond. Eventually, he vaguely answered, “I slept on Tuesday, I think.”

“Nico, it’s Friday.”

“Yeah,” the poet drawled, elongating the word. “I’m reading a poem tonight. It’s an old one, but it mentions teeth, so I’m going for it.”

Jason paused. “Are you sure?”

Another pause. “I’m not going to let two more people die because of me.”

He hung up, leaving Jason up far too early, but unable to fall asleep again. He looked at Nico’s contact screen for a good half hour, lost in the idea that the poet could be dead in as little as 36 hours.

He wasn’t going to let that happen. 

 

 

Nico looked like shit when Jason saw him at the bar hosting the poetry reading. He had these huge bags under his eyes, he was paler than Jason remembered him, and he was wearing an oversized hoodie that hung past his fingertips. He greeted Jason with a tired smile when he saw the detective sitting in the corner from his sat next to the stage with a few other poets. Eventually, Nico was called to go up, and he stood, back straight, to walk on the stage. Aside from his fidgeting fingers, he looked calm and collected, almost like he wasn’t walking toward sudden death. He introduced himself, as well as mentioning the title of his poem, ‘Nectar’.

“ _Damn, I know the sound of your name like I know the taste of mine,_  
 _And if I know any one thing, it’s salt on skin,_  
 _It’s the bitter burn of alcohol down my throat, your mouth is the chaser,_  
 _Sometimes, I swear I taste you behind my teeth,_  
 _Like you could push them back so hard, I’d still smile all blood to you,_  
 _Because the tap of your fingers over my heart is like music,_  
 _And I want to dance all goddamned night_ ,  
 _See if your presence is the nectar I need to heal this shell,_  
 _Because the truth is, right now I’m a mess,_  
 _And I need your hands on my hips to replace the feel of another’s,_  
 _And I’m fucking selfish, but honestly, I don’t know how to breathe,_  
 _Not without someone else near me to show me how._  
 _I am a dreamer, I’m desperately clinging to this idea,_  
 _And sometimes, I need a one-night stand-in for my happy ever after,_  
 _So don’t ask me to spend my day with you,_  
 _I belong in the midnight hours, where I can break and shatter,_  
 _And not hurt anyone around me._  
 _But it’s still dark out right now, so let’s just be._ ”

Even going three days straight without sleep, Nico didn’t waver once. He accepted his applause and left the stage, shooting a look Jason’s way. The detective nodded, standing up to leave. They’d agreed on this before the reading, that Jason couldn’t be there to police things. Nico would do his best not to get killed, but the detective would only alert the person sent to capture Nico. So, with extreme hesitance and one last look, Jason left, hoping for the best.

 

He got a call three hours later, answering it without even pausing to check caller ID.

“I wasn’t taken.”

Jason would’ve sighed his relief, but Nico’s panicked inhales alerted him that something was wrong. “Nico?”

“She always takes them that same night,” Nico answered. “But she didn’t take me. Why didn’t she take me?”

“Maybe she’s waiting,” Jason suggested.

“That’s not her MO,” Nico insisted. “She didn’t take me. What if she took someone else?”

“I don’t know-“

“Why didn’t she take me,” Nico sobbed into the phone. “I can’t- I can’t keep doing this, I don’t want anyone else to die, it was supposed to be me.”

“Nico, do you want me to come over?” Jason offered to the hysterical poet, standing from where he was sitting on the couch, waiting for the call. “I can come over.”

“Please,” Nico said after a moment of silence that had Jason on edge. “I don’t want to be alone right now.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, I was on vacation, and I couldn't get service a lot of the time. But the break was kind of nice, and now I'm refreshed and ready to go.

When Jason knocked on the door to Nico’s apartment, all he heard was a muffled ‘comet in’. The door was unlocked, so Jason walked right in. Nico was lying face first on his couch, arms stretched out in front of him. Jason saw bandages where he’d presumably scratched through the skin. He was pressing his face into a pillow, shirtless, letting Jason see the taut curve of the poet’s spine, showcasing defined shoulder blades, covered in light pink lines that trailed out like tree roots down the noticeable column of his spine.

“What the hell happened there?” Jason sat down on the sturdy coffee table, reaching out to his devastated friend. Nico’s back was cool to the touch, and up close, Jason noticed that his shoulders were dusted with a light layer of freckles. 

“You know how Drew and I hit it off?” Nico asked, face still buried in the pillow. “Girl was nice and all, but she had literal talons. My sheets looked like I was doing Civil War surgery.”

“Damn,” Jason muttered. He looked around the empty living room, noticing that some of the pictures were missing and that the drawings previously sitting where Jason currently sat were gone. “Where’s-“

“I sent Calypso to her grandmother for a little while,” he said, looking up and resting the side of his face on the pillow. “I didn’t want her around while this happened.”

Nico looked horrible. The bags under his eyes looked like smudges of dark purple paint, red rimmed and damp with unshed tears. He reached up to rub his eyes and Jason saw the bloody mess of Nico’s fingers, where he’d chewed his nails down. “I’m tired,” he said suddenly, and god, did he look it. 

“You should get some sleep,” the detective agreed, eyeing Nico’s sleep-bruised eyes and slumped shoulders. 

Nico shook his head, pulling his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. “I can’t. Evey time I try to sleep, I keep seeing them die,” he looked down, biting his lips as silent tears streamed down his face. “And I keep thinking about that note. It worries me, that someone knows that much about not only me, but my family.” He turned to look at Jason, staring into the others eyes. “I worked so hard to keep Calypso, after Percy and Annabeth died. I didn’t even get one day to grieve before all the legal shit started flying my way. And now? Everything I’ve done could literally crumble out from me if I don’t die in the next few days.”

He ran his hands through his hair, cursing loudly. “I want this whole fucking thing to disappear. I want Silena and Ethan and Octavian back.” 

Jason moved to sit next to Nico, who didn’t move away when the detective placed a comforting arm on his shoulder. He looks up to the cop, tears still streaming down his face, and sank into the comforting touch. They sat for a moment, Nico with his silent tears, Jason with his searching look, trying to find something in Nico’s eyes, some hint at what to do to soothe the crying poet.

Eventually, Nico leans forward and rests his head on Jason’s shoulder, and they sit there for a while. Nico grabbed a handful of the other’s shirt, kneading in between his fingers. Jason reached up, brushing his fingers through the back of the poet’s hair until he felt Nico’s breathing start to even out. Eventually, Nico was practically asleep in Jason’s lap.

“Don’t go,” Nico pleaded, his voice nothing more than a whisper. Jason pulled the afghan flung over the back of the couch down, wrapping it around both of their shoulders.

“I won’t. Get some rest.”

And Nico did, obediently falling asleep right on the detective’s chest. Jason sat there, kept awake by his racing mind. He was, three weeks prior, as independent as possible. He had no connections outside of work and Reyna that he cared for, and he could quietly slip away without leaving some kind of damage behind. Now? The sleeping boy on his lap left him stranded in the middle of a twisted knot of emotions and people. Nico was so involved, that if you took him out, the whole web unwound. And Jason was willingly tossing himself into that knot. He was scared, but at the same time, enthralled, knowing that he’d found a person who wormed their way past all of Jason’s hard-fought defenses and sat right in his heart. 

The detective eventually fell asleep, aided by the gentle cadence of the boy breathing softly against his chest. It was the best sleep he’d gotten in years, and the best sleep he’d get for a long time to come.

 

Jason woke up to the smell of fresh brewing coffee. He blinked open his eyes, almost expecting it to be extremely late, considering Nico’s sleeping habits, but was surprised to find himself blinking in the glare of morning light. He sat up, shrugging the blanket from around his aching shoulders, to see Nico wide awake, standing in the doorway to the kitchen and buttoning the cufflink of a very nice, tailored suit jacket. His hair was left without product, brushed back but otherwise in its natural, fluffy state. He had no tie, just a white dress shirt with the top button undone, and black slacks to match his blazer. Jason could still see the chain around Nico’s throat catching the light.

“Morning, Jay, I made coffee,” the poet greeted, grabbing his own mug from the counter beside him and taking a sip. 

Jason yawned, rubbing at his stiff neck. “Morning. Why are you dressed like that?”

“Ethan’s funeral is today,” Nico answered with a sad shrug. “Honestly, I was kind of hoping I’d be dead by now so I didn’t have to go.”

Jason gave the poet a sympathetic nod. “I went to my partner’s funeral, back when I was just a year in. It was the hardest thing to do, getting out of my car and walking in. But I knew I’d always regret not going.”

Nico nodded, looking at the ground. “I’m sorry about your partner. That must have been rough.”

Jason nodded, standing up and popping his back. “Do you want me to come? I know I hardly knew the guy, but you shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

“Don’t you have work?” Nico asked, betraying his concerned words with a look so hopeful Jason wouldn’t have gone in if the killer came to the station and started butchering people right there.

He shook his head. “Not today, at least until we find anything. I can go back to my place, get dressed, and meet you at the place if you’d like.”

Nico gave him this look like he was about to start crying again, his eyes trusting and open and so thankful and Jason knew right then that he would probably do anything for that boy. 

 

The funeral was just like every other funeral: sad, quiet and densely packed. Jason sat near the middle with Nico, who was fiercely gripping the hand the detective had offered him when they sat down. Ethan’s family consisted of his very stern faced mother, who sat silently, staring stoically at the wall. His father sat beside her, crying silently, just as Nico had the night before. Ms. Nakamura was holding his hand, both of their knuckles white. The rest of Ethan’s family consisted of his mother’s parents, who were both, like their daughter, stoic and silent, and Ethan’s paternal grandmother, sobbing into her hands next to her son. 

Nico spoke to them quietly before the service, receiving a firm handshake from Ethan’s mother and a hug from his father. That was when Nico started crying, silent tears that were just barely noticeable. Jason had stood back, accepting that this was a private moment, an intimacy that Jason shared with his partner’s parents when she had died. It was a hard moment, but a necessary one. When Nico returned to the detective’s side, Jason offered his hand, and Nico gripped the appendage.

There was no pastor to speak for the atheist poet, just Ethan’s father who talked about him for a moment before he was overcome with emotion. Ethan’s mother went next, keeping her composure for her small, but kind speech. Jason did not mistake her stoic emotion for lack of feeling. This was a women torn to shreds by her loss, but bravely facing what must have been the worst time of her life.

Finally, after Ethan’s family spoke, Nico, declared Ethan’s closest friend, was called up to speak. He left Jason’s side with a mournful look. He walked up to the front of the home like a man on death row. 

“I wanted to share a poem of Ethan’s with you all,” he said simply, looking across the crowd. “He wrote this when he lost his grandfather, and it’s the only way I’ve ever been able to think about death since ive heard it.” He cleared his throat, and then spoke the poem, obviously memorized. 

“ _A ship, on the harbor, sailing across the water._  
 _It’s soft, gentle, and I need some of that right now._  
 _It sails so far away that I can’t see it anymore._  
 _But somewhere, it must be as tall as a god,_  
 _A visage of white sails, pristine in its glory._  
 _I can’t see the ship, but it still exists somewhere._  
 _And someday, I’ll join you out in the water._  
 _Someday, I’ll leave someone waiting,_  
 _Watching that ship, on the harbor, sail across the water_.”

Nico looked down, muttering a quiet thank you, and left the podium, making his way back to Jason. On the way, he was stopped by Ethan’s grandmother, who touched his arm and said something low and quiet. Nico nodded, his smile sad, and whispered something back to the woman. When he made it back to Jason’s side, it seemed that some of the tension had drained from his shoulders. He still clutched at Jason’s hand, but when Jason looked over, the tears had slowed.

“What did she say to you?” Jason asked when he was driving Nico home after the surface. Nico looked out the window, playing with his necklace.

Nico smiled fondly. “She said that one day, more people will know the name Ethan Nakamura than whoever was dumb enough to kill him,” he answered softly. “I hope to god she was right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, and its poem, were very personal to me. I recently attended the funeral of my grandfather, and this poem was based off of the sermon that someone gave at the funeral. I hope you all enjoyed.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so bad at this whole 'updating on time' thing. Sorry. Still love you guys<3

Nico was shaking before they even made it to the crime scene. The tremors started in his hands, clenched to fists in his lap, but they traveled. His lean muscles were tense, pulled taut as a bowstring, and it showed in the minute shivers wracking his body. When they finally pull up to the scene, Nico launched himself from the passenger seat before they even came to a complete stop.

“Are you okay?” Jason rushed to the side of his companion, who was leaning against the side of the abandoned building. He looked ready to topple over, dark smudges under his eyes more prominent than they had been at the funeral nearly three days ago, his oversized sweater with the word ‘Navy’ emblazoned across the front hanging off his shaking fingers like a child wearing their parents clothes. His eyes darted around Jason, looking for something, frantic in their search.

“No,” Nico answered on a fast exhale. “Everything is moving so fast, and I can’t stop seeing them. Last night I tried sleeping again but I had a nightmare and I couldn’t get to sleep again, and I haven’t slept more than three hours since the funeral, and I feel like I can’t breathe sometimes-“

Jason cut him off by grabbing his sweater-clad hands and holding them steady. Nico looked up at him with damp eyes. Jason leveled him with a steady gaze, Nico’s eyes staying stationary for once. “Don’t work yourself up Nico. This thing is hard enough, you scaring yourself isn’t helping. We need you at your best here.”

Nico looked down at their hands, at how their fingers had interlocked when Jason was speaking so that they molded perfectly together. “What if I can’t?”

“You can,” Jason told him, no room in his tone for argument. “I know you can.”

Nico gave him a weak smile, a hardly-there tilt to the corners of his lips, and freed one of his hands to wipe at his eyes. He kept his other hand tangled with Jason’s, seeking a comfort the detective was happy to provide as he led the grieving psychic into the building. It was just like the rest: decrepit, molding, falling apart at the seams. Every board groaned beneath even Nico’s light form. The room they were looking for was up a flight of stairs that Jason had eyed warily at first, but seemed okay enough to let them pass. Nico went first, testing the stairs and jumping back when one splintered under his feet. 

“How the hell did Reyna get up here?” Nico called over his shoulder from where he’d run ahead up the rickety stairs. 

“I stuck close to the wall,” came the other detective’s voice from up the stairs. “And avoid that step with the-“

“ _Fuck!_ ”

“That one, avoid that step.”

Nico looked down at the piece of wood that shattered when he put weight on it, nearly making him tumble down the stairs until Jason caught him. “Thanks for the warning!” he called up the stairs, sending Jason a look of gratitude. Jason helped right the boy, letting him go ahead again, taking Reyna’s advice and sticking close to the wall. ”I’m getting a tetanus shot when this is done.”

“As long as nothing cut you you’ll be fine,” Jason told him when they finally reached the top of the stairs. He’d dropped Nico’s hand for the journey, but the poet sought his hand out once they reached the top, intertwining their fingers again before heading into the room. 

Reyna had her phone out, and was in the middle of typing something, but she stopped when they entered, eyeing their hands and sending her partner a look. “Any way, a couple of kids found the place last night. Forensics went over it, you know the drill.”

Nico did, and he didn’t look happy about it. Jason squeezed his hand, a small gesture to show he was still there. Nico accepted it tentatively, blinking slowly. When he opened his eyes, they were clouded over, and he stepped away from Jason, his hand trailing from the other’s grasp.

He watched silently, unblinking, stuck staring at some horrifying scene if the growing worry lines on his forehead told Jason anything. There was no commentary, Nico hardly made any noise at all, just periodic flinches that grew in intensity. When he finally blinked his eyes back into focus, he grabbed at his mouth in a mix of abject horror and empathy.

“What did you see?” Reyna asked, stepping forward.

The psychic shook his head, less like disagreement and more like he was trying to shake of the image. I don’t want to talk about it,” he said quietly. “Find the note, bedroom.”

Jason left to go find it, while Nico looked around the room. Broken glass sat below each boarded up window, graffiti tagged every wall. Everything was falling apart, rendered ugly by time and weather and cruel vandals. “Symbolism,” Nico drawled out, looking away from the bloodstained ground.

Jason returned, wordlessly handing Nico the note, who steeled himself like he was going to war.

_~~Heart~~ _   
_~~Eyes~~ _   
_~~Flesh~~ _   
_Blood_   
_~~Teeth~~ _

_Close, but not what I was asking for. I want my own poem. How about this: write me a poem, or I kill that girl, the English major with the scars. If you want her to live, you read your poem Friday, on stage. Alone. Make it good cutie._

“Fucking crazy bitch,” Nico swore, nearly crumbling the note in his hands. “Goddammit.” He turned on his heel, heading for the door.

“Where are you going?” Jason called after him, following the poet into the hall.

“I have to write a poem for a psychopath,” he called over his shoulder, racing down the stairs faster than absolutely necessary. “And to do that, I need to go find cheap liquor and promiscuous hot people.”

Jason sighed, letting the poet retreat into his coping vices.

 

 

Nico texted him six hours later, promising ‘the best poem ever intended to be read as a challenge to a creepy serial killer that wants to jump my bones and also murder me’, to quote the poet directly. He seemed slightly drunk, but his grammar was still somehow impeccable. Jason credited that to the fact that he was a slam poet, and that he mostly functioned at tipsy, at least.

_Is it all sex and metaphors?_

Nico sent him a laughing emoticon, followed by, _Well, I did write it._

Jason laughed into his hand, sending his reply back. _Wish I could hear it._

_I’ll send you the poem. It’s pretty tame for a me poem._

They were both silent for a minute, until Nico sent him another text. _I have five days left to live. Time to do some bucket list shit, you think?_

_You know we aren’t going to let this person kill you, right?_

Nico didn’t respond the rest of the night. Jason checked every few minutes until he fell asleep. 

 

“Jason, this is kind of weird for you, y’know,” Leo noted, already working on what Jason had asked, phone cradled in the junction of his shoulder in neck while his hands sprawled out over the commission for the officer. “I mean, I get Superman had his dicey moments, but this feels kind of like it’d be unethical, y’know?”

“It’s not for any illegal purposes, Leo,” Jason grumbled into his phone. “It’s actually to solve a crime.”

“And that’s why you aren’t going through your Superior to get this?” Leo asked, taking Jason’s silence as an answer. “As long as this isn’t lie, mafia level shit. I mean, I’d back you up if you went Mob, but you gotta warn me first, y’know? Don’t just drop that shit on me.”

“I’m not going mafia,” Jason sighed. “Pinky promise. Now, how much, how long?”

“This? Please, I had everything laying around, and I’m totally waiting to see if this actually works, so it’s on the house- er, garage,” Leo answered. “This’ll be done by tomorrow afternoon, so you can pick it up after your shift. Just like you said too.”

“Thanks Leo, I owe you.”

“Damn straight. See ya later, Superman.”

 

_Sometimes I feel like you don’t even know me._   
_Like I’m a name that seems, but not._   
_And it scares me a lot._   
_I don’t want to be someone you keep to keep._   
_I want to yell at you but when you look at me,_   
_I grind my teeth to dust and push through my hands,_   
_And I realize I can’t speak to you._   
_Maybe it’s because I know you won’t hear me,_   
_And I can’t hear my echo again._   
_I can’t yell into the chasm between us and keep going._   
_So goodbye, I guess?_   
_I don’t know what I want anymore,_   
_I just want some type of closure that you can’t give._   
_I guess I’ll have to find it myself._

_-Mitchell Charmant, “Hello, Nevermind.”_


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm late, I was having some trouble writing this chapter. I hope you guys enjoy.

Nico looked up at Jason with an apprehensive look. They sat at the same coffee shop where they’d first talked about the case, though now, Nico sat on the opposite side of the table, waiting on Drew. Reyna was busy with a few leads on the homeless escorts, something that eventually Jason would have to join her on. But for the time being, Nico and Jason were stuck on ‘tell a person about the likely possibility of them dying’ duty. 

Drew joined them a few minutes later, a mug of Earl Grey poised in her hands. Her hair hung down around her shoulders like a dark curtain, somewhat obscuring the scars that ran down her neck. She seemed excited to see Nico, but slightly less so when she noticed Jason and the case file in front of them.

“Hey Nico, Jason,” she greeted, sitting down across from them. “Everything okay? You sounded a little tense on the phone.”

Nico sat up. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he answered with a weak smile. “But I wanted to talk to you about the case. Jason,” he nodded to the detective sitting at the table with them, “has given me the liberty to share some information with you.” 

He slid the file across the table. In it were photographs of the last two notes the killer left. Drew read them both, a wrinkle appearing in her forehead. “They mean me, don’t they?” she asked, putting the paper’s down carefully, like they’d explode if she didn’t handle them with care. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Nico replied sadly, looking down at the table. “I think they’ve been following me for a while. They saw you with me.”

Drew reached up, covering her mouth with her hand in a mix of horror and contemplation. “So they want you to write this poem for them, or they’ll kill me? I thought they only targeted poets.”

Jason spoke up this time. “They’re thorough. Have you ever been published for a poem before?”

Drew sat back, thinking it over. “I was in an art and literature magazine back in high school,” she said slowly, as if only just remembering after a long time of not thinking about it. “You don’t think-“

“Do you remember any of it?” Nico asked. “Did you mention blood?”

“I don’t know, maybe, I wrote it in high school, I don’t remember” she sighed, taking a long sip of tea. “So what are we going to do?”

Nico tapped his fingers on the table top, nervous. “I wrote the damn poem,” he answered warily. “At this point, I’m playing their game. They know about my family, so it’s not like I can fight them.” He dragged the case file back over, looking at the pictures. “At this point I can only minimalize casualties.”

“And what if they make another list?”

Nico paused to consider this. “It won’t come to that,” he said, clenching his fists on the table top. “Jason and Reyna are going to figure this out. 

“How can you be sure?”

“I can’t,” Nico said, standing up. He’d hung his coat up on the back of his chair, and he grabbed it, pulling it on. “But I have this feeling, and I can’t really explain it, that this is where it ends.”

Drew stood up as well, pulling Nico into a tight hug. “I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t say anything, just hugged Drew close. Jason averted his eyes, feeling like an intruder to such casual intimacy. Drew left after a moment, Jason and Nico departing for their own destination. 

 

Every moment he could, Jason was with Nico. They spent their evenings together, talking, making dinner, playing video games, just spending time. Jason knew this was a bad idea: he was getting attached to Nico, this tangled mess that came with an expiration date. But when they sat on the couch, and Nico put his head on Jason’s shoulder, the detective couldn’t tear himself away from the poet.

Two nights before the Reading, Jason finally found Drew’s poem. It mentioned blood, and when he shared it with the psychic, Nico swore and texted Drew.

“They aren’t bluffing,” Nico said, burying his face in his hands. Jason wrapped his arm around the boy’s shoulders, trying to comfort the poet in the tactile way that Nico responded well to. Nico wanted contact, physical affection, so when Nico cried into his shoulder, missing his daughter horribly and afraid of dying, Jason could do nothing but stroke his hair and hold him close, letting the boy’s legs rest on his lap. 

Jason spent the night twice. The first time, he was on the couch for two hours, before he heard Nico screaming. He burst in with his gun out, ready to shoot a robber or assassin, when he saw the poet sitting up on the bed, crying into his hands. Jason stayed with him that night, and they didn’t even bother staying in different rooms the second night. It gave Jason an inside view of the poet’s mind that he was previously missing.

On one wall was a corkboard overflowing with papers and photographs, all about poetry. He had pinned up lyrics and classic poems, as well as some by slam poets. The pictures were a random assortment, some beautiful landscapes, some of his family, during and after Percy and Annabeth. On the wall with the door to the room was a bookshelf, filled with rows of novels stacked in no particular order, most about poetry or writing, but a lot of fiction was present a well, a few of the Romantics too. There were nightstands on either side of the bed, the one that Nico obviously slept on housing a framed photograph. It was a picture of Nico, Percy and Annabeth, curled up around each other on the bed, Percy’s arm wrapped around Nico and Annabeth’s waist, the poet’s legs stretched over the boy’s lap, the blond girls head on Percy’s shoulder. They were all in pajamas, like they’d just woken up, but they looked happy. It was in a beautiful silver frame, obviously well loved. Beside that was a picture of Calypso, bent over a sketch book. Some of her drawings were up on the wall, and they were beautiful, images of buildings drawn to the minutest details. 

Nico’s bed was messy, black satin sheets and a nice dark blue duvet. It looked well-loved, like it was originally darker and neater, but it had been a few years since the purchase. Jason wondered what the apartment looked like when Percy and Annabeth still lived there, if it was all that different from the apartment’s current state. Nico was an island in the sea of a bed much too big for one person.

“I’m sorry, I had a bad dream,” Nico answered when Jason walked in the first night. The detective shook his head, putting his gun down.

“Don’t,” Jason said, running his hand through his hair. “I get it, don’t worry about it. Do you-“

Nico blinked up at his with damp eyes, on the verge of crying, so Jason sat down beside him and pulled the poet into his arms. 

“Want to talk about it?”

Nico was quiet for a moment, sniffling into the detective’s shoulder, before he spoke again.

“I dreamed I was in the chair,” Nico started slowly, gripping Jason’s shirt. “And everything around me was dark, but then these spot lights come on, and across from me are Silena, Octavian, Ethan and Mitchell. The killer comes out, but I can’t see their face, but they just start killing them, and I can’t do anything.”

Jason held the poet closer, running his fingers through Nico’s hair just the way he liked. Slowly, he relaxed into the detective’s arms, soothed to sleep. 

Jason slept in the same bed as him that night and the other night that he stayed over. They slept curled up around each other, Nico’s nose pressed into his chest and Jason’s chin resting on the poet’s head. 

Nico didn’t have another nightmare.

 

Friday came eventually. Nico and Jason were tense all day, and the detective made sure to come by before the reading. He couldn’t go into the bar, the note said come alone, and Nico wasn’t going to risk it. But Jason couldn’t stand the thought of not seeing him before he did such a dangerous thing. And he had something important he needed to do.

Nico was waiting outside, typing a message out on his phone. He stopped when he saw Jason, a small smile appearing on his face. He was wearing those bright red skinny jeans that he had on when they first met, and Jason couldn’t help but smile at the memory. When Nico went in for the hug, he couldn’t help but let the touch linger.

“Protect Racheal and Caly,” Nico told the detective, pulling back. “If you don’t have some wicked plan to save my ass, that is.”

Jason ruffled the poet’s hair, enjoying that he didn’t style it, and left it in its natural, fluffy state. “I’m not letting you get away that easy Neeks.”

And that was the moment. Jason saw a future arise that he’d never get if he didn’t lean in right this very second and kiss Nico di Angelo with all his worth.

Nico was surprised, to say the least. It wasn’t the fact that they were kissing, hell, Racheal had been asking daily if they were sleeping together yet. Jason seemed to be pouring all of his heart into the action, holding Nico close like he’d fade away. The poet gripped Jason’s shirt, wanting to be impossibly closer, when he felt the other’s hand slip into his back pocket, granting his wish and pressing them so close there was hardly room for air and clothing between them. 

And then, after a long moment of intense passion, Jason pulled back, just enough for the two of them to breath. Nico pressed his forehead into the detective’s neck, muttering a quiet ‘wow’ as Jason removed his hand from the poet’s back pocket. 

“What was that?” Nico eventually asked in an awestruck voice. 

Jason smirked, pressing a kiss to the boys shoulder. “Incentive not to die.”

“Well then,” the poet said, pulling back and smiling up at the detective. “Looks like I’m coming back.”

They said good-bye, a mix of sad and hopeful swirling like a tornado around them, before Nico had to go in. He took Jason’s hand, squeezing it for what could’ve been the last time, and walked in. Jason closed his eyes, taking a calming breath. He pulled out his phone, opening the conversation between him and Leo, typing out a quick message.

_Turn it on. Showtime._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, due to the dedication and minor bullying of my friend, I might do something like I did for Finish Him! where I add a separate chapter for a Jason/Nico smut. Tell me what you guys think about that.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this is late! Balancing being a writer and a student is tough, and I have so many obligations, but I will try my best to update at least once a week. Please be patient with me, we're almost done here, then I'm going to post the after smut, since you guys seem really into it, we're going to have a two week break, and then I'm going to work on my next story. Question: do you guys want a full-length story that ships Ethan Nakamura and Nico di Angelo? I think I asked this earlier, but I just wanted to ask again and see what responses I'd get. If not that, another Jasico or maybe Perico? You guys can vote in the comment section. Now, without further ado, enjoy!

Nico sat in the corner of the bar, nursing a brandy in-between shaking fingers, watching the poets on before him with polite interest. He recognized several faces in the crowd, smiling and waving, but declining to come sit with anyone. He needed some time to think, and he had such little time to do that. 

That afternoon, he called his daughter. When she answered, she was babbling a vague vision she’d had earlier, but unfortunately wasn’t close to a pencil and paper. Nico listened, hanging on to every word she said, because he realized belatedly that this might be the last time he ever talked to Calypso. 

“I love you, Caly,” he said when she told him that Sally wanted to speak with him. 

“I love you too, Nico,” she replied cheerily. “Here’s Sally! See ya soon!”

“Bye, kiddo,” he said quietly, sighing heavily when he heard the obvious sound of the girl’s grandmother telling her to go and play. “Sally?”

“Hey, Nico. How are you doing?”

Nico didn’t even wait to share pleasantries, instead sharing the long and morbid story that led up to that moment. He cried when he talked about Ethan, and only finished by his pseudo-mother’s coaxing. He felt like a dam broke, and he was finally telling someone everything without the obligation he had to Jason and Reyna. When he was finally finished, he felt ten pounds lighter.

“Do you have a plan for tonight?” Sally asked. Nico laughed, bitter and heartbroken and oh so vulnerable. 

“Read some poetry, piss them off, try not to die?” he suggested weakly.

Sally made a disapproving sound at the back of her throat. “Nico-“

“I can’t do anything else.”

There was silence for a moment. 

“I’ll be fine, Sal,” Nico finally said. “Jason is sure that he can do something. I’m not sure what he’s going to do, but I trust him.”

“And you don’t exactly throw trust like that around.”

Nico scoffed. “What are you suggesting, Sally Jackson?”

“Just talking,” she muttered, in the way only mothers can. “Think about it, darling, if you do survive the night, do you want to say goodbye to Jason?”

And after he hung up, exchanging ‘I love you’ with the women who was pretty much his mother at this point, he was still thinking about that question. He wondered what his life would be like post-killer. 

Then, right before he entered the bar, Jason kissed him like the world could burn to the ground around them and they’d hardly notice. And he thought, hell, maybe living was a good idea.

So, in the bar, Nico thought over his options. Admittedly, there weren’t many. He was probably going to die, and soon, but hell, he’d had a good life up until Silena kicked it. And even then, he was glad he’d met Jason and Reyna. 

And Nico couldn’t stop imagining Jason and Reyna investigating the crime scene where they’d find his body. 

So he finished his drink, hoping it would give him courage where religion couldn’t.

“And now, award winning author of “ _Touch Like Winter_ ” and “Under Your Skin”, Nico di Angelo.”

Nico stood up to loud applause, waving politely to the fans and newcomers alike. He took the stage with his usual flourish. “Thank you, you’re all too kind,” he admonished with a teasing smile. “This is a new poem, and it’s dedicated to a certain special lady out there.” A few girls cat-called from the audience, which he responded to with an obvious, exaggerated wink. “I think you’d like my other works, ladies, but let’s see.” He smiled, then launched into his poem.

“ _A love poem for the person who murdered my friends:_  
 _You see, this isn’t my normal subject._  
 _I write poems about people I sleep with, because I like nice poems._  
 _I don’t like writing 30 lines of ‘fuck you’,_  
 _I’d rather write about a poem about a tree or a dog,_  
 _Because I don’t want to stab dogs or trees,_  
 _But I’m certain police wouldn’t leave us alone in a locked room together._  
 _But you want a love poem, so I’ll give you one, it goes like this:_  
 _Darling, you must be really bored, playing with my heartstrings,_  
 _Trust me, I’m more complicated than your list,_  
 _I am not a performance piece, all of my parts move and function,_  
 _I can keep up with you, and isn’t that a terrible thing to waste._  
 _You have an M.O., let me bow to it now, make it easy for you,_  
 _Two years ago I stood on this stage, said ‘world, bleed me dry,_  
 _You only need to follow the dotted lines I’ve let on this weary body’_.  
 _I want to come face to face with the person who’s murdered so many,_  
 _Shake your fucking hand so hard I break your fingers and you know pain like I do._  
 _But I’ll settle for this, for now, because I’m playing your game._  
 _And tonight, I see you for all your worth._  
 _Don’t underwhelm me._ ”

__For a moment, there was only shocked silence. And then, thunderous applause, the kind Nico thrived off of. He took a little bow, waving to the people, before leaving the stage._ _

__Now, it was a waiting game._ _

__He sat at the bar, talking to anyone who’d approach, making quiet conversation with the people. When a man sat next to him and ordered a drink, Nico casually ended his discussion about Emily Dickenson’s rhyme scheme and accepted the pro-offered alcohol. This was most definitely the guy._ _

__“You know,” he whispered, looking just over the glass to look at the mark, “she’ll just kill you too.”_ _

__The man was ruggedly handsome, shaggy blond hair and bright blue eyes, face marred by a scar that ran from the corner of his mouth to his ear. He sat, tense as a drawstring, but there was this calm that seemed to lurk in his eyes, as close to acceptance as a person about to get brutally murdered could be._ _

__“I know,” was his answer. “It’s you, or my pregnant girlfriend.”_ _

__Nico never slammed a drink back faster._ _

__“Damn me and my altruism,” he muttered under his breath, cringing at the aftertaste of hard liquor and GHB. “I’m sorry.”_ _

__The man beside him didn’t answer for the longest time, staring at the bar-top with haunted eyes. Nico noticed the chain around his throat._ _

__“Where’d you serve?”_ _

__“Kuwait,” was the simple, laconic answer. “Two tours.”_ _

__Nico nodded. “You’ll be okay. She doesn’t kill you guys ritualistically. She’ll just,” he struggled to find the words. “It’s not as bad. I mean, it still sucks, but at least… yeah, no, it sucks, I’m sorry.”_ _

__“Stop apologizing,” the man replied, eyeing him warily. “I’ve accepted it. I just… It’s my kid. I wanted to hold them.”_ _

__Nico reached out and grabbed their hand. It was a simple gesture, but from the way the man looked at him, he could tell it meant a lot. “Boy or girl?”_ _

__“I was thinking it’s going to be a girl,” he answered._ _

__Nico nodded, smiling up at him. “Did you two pick out a name?”_ _

__“Yeah, Kelli wants to name her Nike. I like May.”_ _

__“Those are both nice,” the poet answered._ _

__He never asked for the man’s name. That was a familiarity they couldn’t afford at a time like that. Eventually, Nico started feeling drowsy, alerted his ferry-man, and they left. Nico didn’t put up a fight –at that point, it was really just pointless. He fell asleep after they both climbed into a beat-up looking truck, and didn’t wake up for another three hours. By that time, he was in the killer’s midst._ _

__

__Nico woke up slowly, coming out of his drugged state in stages. At first, all he noted was a sharp sting in his wrists that would only increase the more he moved. It felt biting, like sharp steel pressed against the fragile skin. The next thing he noticed was that whatever was biting into his wrists bound them behind his back at an awkward position. He could feel the strain on his shoulders, and knew it would hurt like a motherfucker trying to get out. The next thing he noticed was the dripping, slow and steady, seeming to coincide with the warmth trailing down his wrists, and belated, the poet realized that was probably his blood. The light was dim in the room, but judging by Nico's intoxicated state, they were well ahead of schedule. This was not the killer's M.O._ _

__Finally, Nico noticed that there was someone with him._ _

__He opened his bleary eyes, trying to focus on the woman opposite of him. She waited patiently for Nico’s eyes to focus, humming something under her breath._ _

__“Why don’t we start a little early?” she asked, and Nico instantly recognized the voice._ _

__“How did you know I would sacrifice myself?” he asked, his voice surprisingly steady._ _

__She smiled wide, pulling at the two scars that ran down her neck in a ghastly way, shrugging plainly. “I had a hunch. You’re a martyr, Nico, it’s what you do,” she leaned forward, propping her chin up on her fist. “Thank you for trying to save me, means a lot, _cutie_.”_ _

__Nico sneered. “I take it back.”_ _

__“That’s not how it works.”_ _

__Nico sighed. “I guess not.”_ _

__Across from him, Drew Tanaka smiled. “Glad you see things my way. Let’s begin, shall we?”_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might be a little slow on responding to the comments, but I swear, I'll still answer them. So you can yell at me for the plot twist and I will write you back, promise <3


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's the next chapter! Hope you enjoy!

Nico sat back, his shoulders feeling strained by the awkward position, tied behind the dentist chair. “So what, you’re going to kill me with your delectable visage?” 

Drew just smiled back, the corners of her lips pulled just a little too wide for the gesture to look as friendly or charming as it had two weeks ago. “Nope. Originally, I was going to do the thousand cut method of bleeding you out, but that seemed like so much effort,” she shrugged, as if she were discussing date-night plans rather than a method of execution. “So, I thought, why not just let you bleed out all nice and slow, so we can talk? I know you’re just _dying_ to pick my brain?”

“You aren’t funny,” Nico replied in a bored tone, rolling his eyes. “So what, you slit my wrists horizontally? You know that-“

Drew was already ahead of him. “That’s why I have the barbed wire. That’ll keep the platelets from forming, and I can do this-“ she reached down for a string attached to the arm of the chair, tugging it towards her. Instantly, a sharp, stabbing pain radiated up his forearms, from wrist to elbow. “And, just for your information, there are several cuts. It will take at least another hour, hour and a half for you to bleed out. So, let’s talk.”

Nico scoffed. “And what if I don’t feel like talking?”

Drew smirked. “I’ll slit your throat.”

Nico’s eyes widened, looking down at the bloody knife resting in Drew’s lap. She wasn’t bluffing: one more body was nothing to her. She felt no love or remorse for the poet across from her, and she wouldn’t lose any sleep after killing him. Hell, she probably wouldn’t even blink.

“What do you want to talk about?” he hazarded, looking down at his lap. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing him afraid.

Drew cleared her throat, tugging on the barbed wire. “Look at me, sweetie,” she coed.

“Don’t call me that,” was the poet’s immediate response. Drew frowned, tilting her head to one side. 

“Why should I?”

Nico rolled his eyes. “You want to kill me. I think we’re past the point of pet names.”

“Did your back ever heal?”

The sudden question threw Nico off. “Yeah, of course it did.”

Drew pouted. “Well that’s a shame, you seemed to like them.”

“You’re crazy, I hated them,” Nico spat. “Your fucking devil claws could’ve left scars, you know. You have a thing for blood?”

“Maybe?”

“So was I always going to be blood?”

That seemed to be the million dollar question. Drew smiled, standing up and bringing the cord and knife with her. She swung one leg over Nico’s, chastising him for moving them by pressing her knife up against his throat. She settled down with both knees on either side of Nico’s hips, perched on Nico’s lap. “I’ll admit, seeing you in particular like this is quiet satisfying,” she almost whispers, running a hand down Nico’s front. He flinches, but doesn’t dare pull away, knowing the knife was still pressed up against his jugular. “After all, you have such a personal connection to this, don’t you?”

“You killed my best friend,” he agreed, glaring up at Drew. “You made it personal.”

“But even before that, you were there. Poor Silena, she’s the one that brought you in on this,” the killer shrugged. “But I knew when I saw you walk into Octavian’s place that you were onto me. And that’s when I decided that you had to die. But first, I had to know how much you found out. So I met you at the bar, and I chatted you up, got you some drinks. But you were so secretive. So, I went home with you, to find out all about you and your cute little life. Like, how you have an adorable little girl.”

“Don’t you fucking talk about her,” Nico spat, momentarily forgetting about the knife at his throat. “I swear to god, if you touch her-“

“You’ll what?” Drew hissed, pressing the blade of her weapon harder against her captive’s throat. “You can’t do anything Nico. You’re going to die, very soon, and I’ll do whatever the fuck I want.” Nico felt tears well up in his eyes. He was immediately terrified for what was left of his family. “But I’ll make you a deal.”

“What?” Nico immediately jumped on the offer, if it meant saving his daughter.

Drew smiled, tapping the handle of her knife. “I want you to write the next list.”

 

Jason had to explain to his police chief exactly how he knew where Nico was, eventually caving and calling Leo, putting him on speaker to describe the device.

“ _I attached a watch battery to a sim card, activated the card, and connected it to a wireless device using some technical mumbo-jumbo you won’t understand. I can track him from half way across the state, easily, and get within 30 feet. And yes, that was all true, I am that good_.”

“I have to admit that is fairly impressive,” Captain Chiron finally conceded. “Although, I’m sure we’ll have to talk about the legality of this at a later time. This wasn’t a wiretap, yes?”

“ _Wiretaps have nothing on my invention,_ ” Leo scoffed over the phone.

“Alright, let’s get mobilized. Jason, we’ll talk about this later.”

 

Nico looked up at her, shaking his head minutely. “No, I can’t do that.”

“Would you rather I kill your daughter?”

Nico felt the tears tracing down his face. His arms burned from behind him, reminding the poet how helpless he was. “I can’t-“

“Make your choice, Nico.”

The poet looked away, towards the blood stained ground. He felt this weight constricting his chest, like he couldn’t breathe, and Nico had no idea what to do. How was he supposed to be responsible for five deaths?

Then he saw his daughter’s face, heard Caly animatedly chatting about another vision, and knew what he had to do.

“I’ll write your damn list.”

 

_World, bleed me dry,_  
 _All you have to do is follow the dotted lines._  
 _Do you know what it feels like to lose it all?_  
 _I’ve got these names still haunting my lips,_  
 _These phantom pains where they held my hands._  
 _We suffer in the name of someone I can’t even believe in,_  
 _And it’s supposed to console me that I’ll see them again._  
 _That doesn’t make up for the fact that I can’t touch them now,_  
 _When I need them the most._  
 _So I’m going to go get drunk, and sleep with strangers_ ,  
 _I’m going to lose the next few days,_  
 _Ride out the worst of it all on someone else’s matress,_  
 _Make myself sick, sorry, sicker,_  
 _Do everything I can to hold myself together._  
 _But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?_

-Nico di Angelo, _Would You?_ , 1rst prize, Poets Undaunted, International Tournament (2011) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, I'm horrible, poor Nico.
> 
> Anyway, anything specific you guys would like to see in the after smut? I might take some suggestions, if I like them. Let me know!


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the climax! Sorry for the long wait, school is a bitch.

“What if I put Drew Tanaka on the list?” Nico asked, glancing up at his captor with a raised brow. It appeared that she already had that covered, if the smirk pulling at her mouth meant anything.

“Drew Tanaka isn’t a poet.”

“You threatened her before,” was the psychic’s immediate counter. “What’s the matter, can’t imagine doing the same thing you’ve done to five people to yourself. Drew Tanaka walked amongst the poets, and she’s published. She fits your parameters.”

The killer frowned, narrowing her lined eyes. “You talk about Drew Tanaka like she’s a separate person.”

“Well the crazy bitch sitting on my lap sure isn’t the one I slept with.” Nico hissed when Drew pulled on the rope in her hand, digging the barbed wire into his arms. 

“Nico, it’s always been the same. The girl you fucked, and the person that killed your best friend, we’re the same person. You can’t appeal to my humanity, there’s no good side begging to right these wrongs, it’s just me. And I am going to be the last person you ever see, not your friend, not Jason, not your daughter, just me, the _crazy bitch_.”

With every word, Drew grew closer and closer, until their faces were mere inches apart and Nico could see every little detail, until he could count each freckle and trace every inch of her scars with his eyes. If anyone had as good a view of Drew as he did in that very moment, the case would’ve been solved instantly.

Too little, too late, Nico mused.

Although, there were slight imperfections: Nico’s vision was slightly blurred, the effects of blood loss catching up to him slowly but surely. He probably had less than an hour left, if he was being generous. 

“Why poets? All the people in New York, and you choose poets. Why?”

The question didn’t shock Drew in the least, but it did get her to sit back. Her Cheshire grin looked disturbing in the low light, pulling at her scars grotesquely. “Because I can.”

“What-“

“I don’t have a reason, not really. I went to a poetry reading a few years ago, and I thought it was so… _pretentious_ ,” she drew out the word, like a child swearing for the first time. “I mean, everyone seemed so empty, like if you brought a pin too close they’d just pop and there’d be nothing in them but hot air.” She shrugged, an innocent gesture, if it weren’t for the knife in her hand. “Humans are just so fragile, you know? Hit us, we bruise, cut us, we bleed, we’re like glass. I thought your kind would appreciate the metaphor.”

Nico rolled his eyes. “Obviously, the irony is lost on you.”

“How so?”

“Murdering for the sake of murdering? Complimenting our pieces by killing us? You’re a poet’s wet dream,” he smirked at Drew’s narrowed eyes. “Isn’t it all so…poetic? You and I, here, talking about poetry while I bleed out slowly, get me a pen, it’s golden. _Crimson drops like all the wishes you ever made/ Sliding, dragging oh so slow, trapped/ We make an infinity out of borrowed time, caught/ Lovers now betrayed, made witness to the greatest departure/ Lost in the comfort of the dying light._ ”

“That’s Malcom Chase,” Drew identified. “Are you nominating him for your list?” 

Nico shrugged, hardly feeling the tug on his bloody arms anymore. “Right after Drew Tanaka.”

The killer frowned. “I should slit your throat right now.”

“And end what must be the greatest night of your life early? Don’t you serial killers like to savor this?”

She smiled, touching Nico’s cheek with the tip of her knife. “I want to see _everything_. And I get to see it from right here. It doesn’t matter what I do, I’ll savor this plenty.”

Nico tilted his head back. “Then do it, motherfucker. You wanted me to play by your rules? Well, fine, I am. Just stab me now and get it over with, because I guarantee you, you will _never_ out-bullshit me.”

_Three._

Drew snarled, smacking Nico full across the face. His head whipped to the side, and he saw her lift the blade above her head.

_Two_.

Nico closed his eyes, tensed for the hit. _This is it,_ ran through his mind, along with this is going to hurt.

_One. All operatives, move in._

Two loud bangs occurred in swift succession. The first was the door to the apartment being kicked open. The second was Officer Jason Grace firing his pistol at Drew Tanaka.

Blood exploded from the wound, staining Drew’s shirt crimson red almost instantly. Nico’s eyes had flung open at the sound of a gun going off, and now he was sitting front row to Drew slowly realizing she had been shot. She seemed already in shock, touching the wound tenderly and bringing her hand up to look at the blood. The knife had flown from her hands, landing somewhere on the floor behind Nico’s head, and without it, she was powerless. Just when Nico thought she would drop from the wound, she turned and smiled at Jason, blood on her teeth.

“Well done, Jason,” she said quietly, a slight strain in her voice. She clutched at the wound on her side, but it did little to staunch the blood flow. Then, she fell to the side, unconscious.

Nico felt her blood starting to dry on his throat.

Jason ran forward, stepping over Drew’s body to get to Nico. He reached down, a panicked look on his face, his hand coming up to touch Nico’s throat, to touch the blood pooled there.

“It’s not mine,” Nico said, seeing the tension siphon from Jason’s shoulders for a split second. 

“Where?”

“My arms.”

Jason circled the chair, hissing at the sight of Nico’s blood soaked arms. “Hold on, I’m going to get you out of here.”

Nico would’ve commented on how terribly clichéd that line was, but his head wasn’t in the game. Leftover drowsiness from the drugs teamed up with blood loss and an adrenaline crash to send Nico reeling, and without a steady touch to keep him grounded, he felt light and untethered.

“Nico, stay with me!”

The sudden weight on his arms had Nico blinking the fog away, looking down and noticing that Jason had wrapped his arms in the detective’s jacket to staunch the bleeding. When the poet looked up, he saw Jason’s frantic eyes from where he was standing right beside the prone psychic.

“You came,” was all Nico said, fisting a blood soaked hand in the front of Jason’s shirt. The cop nodded, backed suddenly by flashing red and blue light from the boarded up window. Nico watched the lights reflect on the roof of the apartment for a moment, lost in the simple colors. 

“Nico, we’re going to take you to the hospital. You’re going to be fine.”

Nico nodded weakly, amiable to whatever the detective told him. “It’s over, right?”

“Yeah, it’s all done.”

Nico nodded, letting himself close his eyes. A few feet away, Drew lay on the ground, her hair fanned out behind her like a black void, her skin cooling, laying in a puddle of bright red. Official cause of death was bleeding out to do heavy internal hemorrhaging. 

She’d already hidden the note in the other room.

_~~Heart~~ _   
_~~Eyes~~ _   
_~~Skin~~ _   
_~~Blood~~ _   
_~~Teeth~~ _


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We finally made it! *champagne poppers go off* Stay tuned for more notes, after this chapter.

Nico spent three days in the hospital, getting blood work done and having his arms stitched back up. It took three flashes of Jason’s badge for the nurses to stop jumping to conclusions, but by the beginning of the second day, Jason was visiting Nico to check up on him. The poet was out of it for most of the time, but Jason didn’t stop coming. While the case was being reviewed by a circuit court to judge the legality of Jason’s improvised tracking device, the cop had plenty of time to talk. 

It was nearing the end of visiting hours on the last day when Nico was coming back from the vending machine and caught sight of an older woman waiting in the hall, typing a message into her phone. She seemed much older than she should be, her dark hair mixed in with gray, and a tired look to her eyes that Jason knew never went away. As he approached, she looked up, and Jason noted that she had a kind, warm face, the kind of a grandmother. He also noticed the startlingly bright green of her eyes, and he recognized them immediately.

“You’re Calypso’s grandmother,” he noted, and the woman smiled kindly. “Jason Grace, I-“

“Nico’s told me about you,” she replied, saving Jason from the awkwardness of trying to explain his relation to Nico. “I’m Sally Jackson.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Jason offered his hand and Sally stood to shake it. “Is Calypso with you?”

“Yes, she’s with Nico right now. I thought I’d give them a minute.”

Jason took the hint, sitting beside Sally when she did. They fell into a comfortable silence, but Jason could tell that the older woman wanted to say something. Eventually, she did.

“Thank you, for saving him. I know you had to use… _unorthodox_ methods,” Sally euphemized. “I’ve always considered Nico to be a son of mine, and I know that Caly…well, she deserves to be with her father. So thank you for making sure he’d be around for her.”

Jason was amazed by this women, and reached out to touch her arm in what he hoped to be a comforting gesture. Sally smiled at him, and they shared a look, absolutely silent, but charged with all the words they couldn’t imagine being able to say. Jason thought that Nico would weave those words into a perfect metaphor, and say everything they couldn’t. But for the two, who were not poets, the silence was enough.

 

“…And then, you fight a person with a led pipe-“

“Do they have the pipe or do I?” Nico asked, chuckling good-humoredly. Calypso was sitting on the bed next to him, lying back to stare at the ceiling with Nico.

She scoffed. “They have the pipe. You’re too much of a nerd to beat someone up.”

“Rude,” Nico chided lightly. Caly just laughed, rolling her bright eyes. “I could so battle someone to the death with a pipe.”

“Yeah, sure,” Caly drew out, nudging the older boy in the side. “But the other person is missing a lot, because they’re using way too much force, so the pipe keeps missing you, and you try and talk them out of it-“

“I’m using puns, aren’t I? That’s something I’d do.”

Caly shook her head. “You’re mostly screaming like a baby.”

“I so do not do that!” Nico protested, turning to his daughter. “You’re crazy.”

“You’re only screaming because there are things everywhere, making a bunch of noise. And you keep stepping on broken glass.”

“No shoes?”

“No shoes,” the little girl confirms solemnly. 

Nico sighs. “What is it with serial killers and shoes?”

“Shoes represent protection and dignity, so by removing them you remove a person’s most basic form of protection and metaphorically stripping them of what little security they can be assured of in dire situations?”

Nico raised an eyebrow. “Have you been reading Freud again?”

“No,” Caly answered in the way that definitely meant yes. Nico rolled his eyes again, ruffling the girls hair. 

“You’re going to graduate college at nine, I swear.”

Caly smiled, hugging Nico’s arm. She was silent for a moment, before she spoke up.

“Was it just a dream?”

Nico sighed, hugging his little girl close. “I don’t know kiddo. I sure hope it was. Although, if you start seeing the future in dreams Racheal is never going to shut up to all PTA moms who think their kids are special.”

The young girl laughed, and Nico couldn’t help but hold her tighter and join in. He never thought he’d get this again, and honestly, he never thought the novelty would wear off. He had the chance to see Caly grow up, and Nico would be thankful of that for the rest of his life.

“Love you, Caly,” he sad softly, his voice hardly more than a cracked whisper. He heard Caly’s smile in her words.

“Love you too, Neeks.”

 

 

Jason was there when Nico woke up the third day, reading a book that Nico instantly recognized.

“ _Under My Skin_ is so much better than that one,” he commented idly. “I’m better at sex poetry, as you’ve seen.”

“I like the one called “Illiad”,” was Jason’s simple retort. “ _Come, kind strangers/ Let me tell you a story you’ve never heard._ ”

“ _Be still, tell-tale hearts/ And hear that I don’t want sympathy,_ ” Nico answered with the next two verses. Jason looked up, a brief look of challenge in his eyes as he leaned forward in his chair, reading on.

“ _Some stories wrap around the globe like a sash of blood/ I’ve never been so contained to keep to one corner._ ”

Nico met him head on. “ _I never color inside the lines fate put down/ Why not paint the sky red to match the way you make me feel?_ ”

_“Why not touch clouds like passing ships/ Why not hold onto the song in the wind?”_

“ _Why not ignite a fire in your blood/ The kind that burns in dark places to keep the wolves at bay._ ”

“ _Why not touch your face like I’d touch my own/ Hold you so tight that if I let go you’d crumple._ ”

“ _Why not make you want and beg/ Until you hear the word_ please _and taste my voice._ ”

_“Why not show you how the stars shine at night/ And compare them to your visage next to mine?”_

Nico smiled. “ _Why not tell you a story that spans the globe and still hold you to my corner?_ ”

Jason couldn’t help but grin at the poet, reaching out for the poet’s hand, careful of his bandaged arms. “I think I’m starting to really like poetry.”

“Good, because I like the way you read it,” Nico answered, squeezing Jason’s hand in acknowledgement of their double meanings. He tugged Jason closer until Jason took the hint and leaned in, kissing Nico softly on the mouth. They had to talk, about a lot of things, and there was a lot of problems they’d have to face in the next few days, but for that moment they were content to sit and just be Nico and Jason, a mouthy psychic poet and an unorthodox detective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After smut in a week or two! Requests? Desires? Things you'll hunt down and slaughter me for if I add in? Comment, and I'll take it into consideration! I'm not as prompt on responding to comments as I've always been, but I'll be sure to read them all and I'll be sure to respond as soon as I can.
> 
> As always, thank you guys so much for reading and commenting, I love all of you, you all have a special place in my heart, right next to Nico di Angelo and his sassy mouth. I owe you guys so much, and my smutty thank you notes are just a small part of my unending gratitude.
> 
> Question: What other fandoms are you guys in? Want to see work for those? Want to fangirl/boy all over them? Comment! 
> 
> Thanks guys. All my love. <3

**Author's Note:**

> I respond to all comments, so don't be afraid to say something! I hope you enjoyed <3


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